


She Wanted Storms

by scoradh



Category: Original Work
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-17
Updated: 2014-03-17
Packaged: 2018-01-16 02:09:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1327981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scoradh/pseuds/scoradh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sex, drugs and rock'n'roll.</p><p>Written in December 2009.</p>
            </blockquote>





	She Wanted Storms

**Author's Note:**

> Betas: softlyforgotten, oddishly, blindmouse and ravurian (livejournal).

Initially, the week leading up to Nick Hedges' eighteenth birthday didn't differ significantly from the other fifty-one of his seventeenth year. As the day itself approached, he often felt little feathers of anticipation swirl in his stomach. But to be fair, he didn't think about it a lot. Just once or twice an hour.   
  
On Friday evening, Nick tore through his homework. The air outside was clear and fresh, hardly any wind - perfect for some impromptu ball. There was rain on the horizon, however. There was always rain on the horizon, except for when it was actually raining. Nick rounded off an essay with a rather garbled conclusion and grabbed one of his basketballs.   
  
"Gonna shoot some hoops, Ma," he yelled.   
  
A faint cry echoed from the studio. Mrs Hedges was a painter, and quite a good one, if your taste in art ran to enormously naked women with three eyes and blue skin. Nick didn't pretend to understand it, but the paintings sold for thousands of euro. According to the art magazines laid around prominently and geometrically on every table, this was because Sylvia Hedges was an 'avant-garde interpreter of the stuggles of modern life, a woman who embodies the zeitgeist.' According to Nick's friend Padraig, it was because there was a fool born every minute.   
  
He chanced his arm and the fate of his ball to bounce it lightly on the hall floor. Mrs Hedges had once burst a ball with a paintbrush because the rattle of the backboard made her lose her connection to the creative vista. Nick was pretty sure she was only setting up gallery viewings this evening, fortunately. His mother under the influence of the muse put Medusa to shame. Nick tended to practise on the school courts those days.  
  
Thinking about it made him bounce the ball a little too strongly; one of the Ming vases under the SOMETHING mirror rattled. Nick shoved the ball under his arm and stopped the vase's trembling with a finger. At that moment, the doorbell rang.  
  
The mirror caught Nick's bowling-ball-faced moment of surprise. Nick's friends usually hopped the fence and used the back door. Mrs Hedges' arty brigade, for all their non-conservative leanings, never showed up without phoning first. Mr Hedges - well, Mr Hedges had no friends, as far as Nick knew. Once a year, their accountant would visit his father for an hour-long discussion about taxes, but that was _always_ in October. Not a stock-market crash nor the fall of Western civilisation would prompt the eight-hundred year old Mr Lewey to visit out of turn.  
  
"Coming," Nick called. Flipping the locks was a little tricky with the ball under his arm, but Nick had skills. A mere three minutes later, he threw the door wide open and beamed at the visitor with all the geniality of unexpected success.  
  
"Hi," said Nick, his smile slipping a little as the oldish man on the stoop stared and maintained a choking silence. "Are you here to see anyone in particular?"   
  
The man's gaze was appraising, in a way that made Nick uncomfortable. But it was somehow different from how the sleazy individuals who hung around the park ('pimps,' said Padraig knowledgably) or outside the blue light discos stared at him; it was almost as if the man recognised him.  
  
"Yeah." The rather dreamy expression snapped out of the man's face. He dug in the pocket of his insanely tight jeans and squinted at a grubby bit of notepaper. "Dammit, forgot my glasses again. Mr Hedding? No. Mr Hedge. Mr Hedge, seriously." He laughed, a grating little gasp.   
  
"Mr Hedges is my dad," said Nick cautiously. "He's not home yet, though. Are you sure it isn't _Mrs_ Hedges you're looking for?" In his jeans and silk shirt, belt dripping with metalware, and unnecessary sunglasses, the man was definitely a candidate for one of Mrs Hedges' proteges. The idea of Mr Hedges having an appointment with a man who had stars tattooed on his knuckles was laughable.  
  
"Oh, _no_ ," said the man, with heavy force. "I don't think so. Not _Mrs_ Hedges."  
  
"Please come in, then." Nick swallowed a sigh. He'd been brought up in the shackles of politeness and so he'd have to entertain his father's guest until Mr Hedges returned from the office. No doubt by then it would be dark, raining, or both.  
  
"I've caught you at a bad time."   
  
"No, no," said Nick hastily. He shifted the ball on his hip, and the man tilted his head.  
  
"I think," he started to say, but never finished. Instead, he pulled off his sunglasses by one arm, a smooth move that bore the hallmarks of habit, and rubbed circles around his eyes. They were a deep, unseemly blue; grooves radiated out from the reddened rims, reaching all the way to his temples. "I'll bail for a little while. When'll your - um, dad. What time does he, you know, finish whatever?"  
  
"Work?" suggested Nick. The man was sounding more and more like a posterboy for Talk to Frank. "About six, unless he has to work late. He'll be home by eight, with traffic. If I took your name and contact details, he could get back to you -?"  
  
"I'll be back at eight," said the man. "Tell him - tell him - you know what? Don't. I will."  
  
"Uh," said Nick. "Okay."   
  
The man half-saluted him, silver rings glinting in the disinterested sunshine. Nick watched as he retreated down the driveway. He walked toe-to-heel, like an Egyptian fresco. Perhaps that accounted for the hip-swaying.   
  
Nick was surprised by the car that instantaneously pulled up, almost as if the man had summoned it by telepathy. It was a sleek black monster, all endless tinted windows, _and_ it was a Merc. Padraig would be impressed. Nick was rather glad Padraig wasn't there to witness it, because he had a depressively retentive memory for car specs, which he combined with a painful need for dissemination to any captive audience.   
  
Nick slipped down to the gate and watched until the car whirred off into the distance. Only then did he go to the mini-court at the side of the house and start practising three-pointers.  
  
+++  
  
Nick stopped an hour later with salt crusting his eyelashes and his hair a wet mess. Marita, the housekeeper, came to the back gate and waved at him with wooden spoon.  
  
"Dinner, Nicholas!" she called. It was a point of honour for her to call her employers by their full titles, no matter how much Mrs Hedges complained that hers made her feel positively Palaeolithic. Nick had only recently broken Marita of the 'Master Nicholas’ habit, so he let the rest slide. Marita hailed from Cobh, but she'd watched too much television. Nick caught the ball on the rebound and carried it inside.   
  
"Mrs Hedges has gone out with a client," said Marita, consulting a fat Filofax she kept in the breadbin. Nick already knew his mother was gone - had vaguely registered her car pulling out of the garage - but it wouldn't do to deprive Marita of her fun.  
  
"Okay. So what's for eats?" asked Nick and, belatedly, "Where's Dad?"  
  
"Lasagne and tomato salad," said Marita. "And Mr Hedges is with a - visitor."  
  
"Really?"   
  
Marita shrugged. They shared a mutual eyebrow raise of scepticism before Nick slid off his stool. "I'll just put this upstairs," he said, holding up the ball.  
  
"Ask Mr Hedges if he wants his dinner now or later while you're at it," said Marita, who could be relied upon to be complicit.  
  
Nick bounced the ball as he approached his father's study to give him fair warning. After his knock, there was a shuffle of voices before the handle snicked. Mr Hedges' harassed face appeared.  
  
"What?" he snapped.  
  
Nick recoiled. His father was usually grey of personality and folded in a bit, as if from great weariness, but he was rarely impatient. "Marita wants to know if you're having dinner now?"  
  
"Get her to put it in the warmer," said Mr Hedges. He closed the door smartly, but not before Nick got a glimpse of tattooed, silver-ringed hands, tapping a restless beat on the arm of a chair.  
  
On impulse, Nick chucked the basketball down the hall. It gave some satisfying thuds before rolling to a stop. "Oops," said Nick loudly, and thundered after it. He gave himself a few seconds for safety, then crept back to the door.  
  
Nick was no expert on eavesdropping, but the two men in the study were making no effort to be circumspect. In fact, if Nick hadn't known such a thing to be categorically impossible, he would have thought his father was shouting.  
  
"- what you're doing here!"  
  
There was a pause. Nick had to strain to hear the next words.  
  
"I thought it was you." The man laughed. It wobbled a bit. "When he opened the door, Danny, I thought it was _you_."  
  
"I see time hasn't made you any smarter, then," said Mr Hedges.  
  
"Don't. This isn't - you left, you can't be angry."  
  
"I'll be angry if I want to. This is my house, this is my _life_."  
  
"Yeah. Yeah, it is." Another pause. Eavesdropping was tedious business, Nick decided, even if it did involve him. His knees were cramping from crouching.   
  
"Did he ever learn an instrument?" was the man's next question. It seemed random, to say the least. Mr Hedges didn't answer for a while.   
  
No; Nick hadn't ever learned music, nor had any desire to - except. He'd been six, or seven, not old enough to be too old for the toy keyboard bestowed upon him by a benevolent aunt. It played music - Father John, Twinkle Twinkle - if you pressed a button. Nick had been keen to learn the real thing. He'd pestered his parents for piano lessons until they got him a puppy, which had proved quite the diversionary tactic. Nick hadn't thought of piano lessons again until now, a decade later.  
  
Marita's bellow about burning pasta startled Nick into guilt. He left the ball in favour of dinner and telling Marita to put Mr Hedges' aside, which provoked her rant about the ratio of exposure time to limpness of lettuce leaves.   
  
Nick wasn't bothered about missing the end of his father's conversation with the mystery stoner. It hadn't sounded that interesting anyway.  
  
+++  
  
The friendly against Douglas was scheduled for eleven am on Saturday. Nick was up, washed and fed by nine. He took his ball out into the chill morning for some extra warm-up. It was a quarter to ten by the time he went back inside, panting icicles into the air, to find the house as dead as he'd left it.   
  
Marita had weekends free and Mrs Hedges was undoubtedly sleeping off the excesses of her 'business meeting'. Mr Hedges was usually roped into driving Nick to Saturday matches. Nick was conscientious about checking whether or not his father was working on the days in question, and he would have sworn sideways and backwards that today wasn't one of them. Yet there was no smell of percolating coffee and old-fashioned aftershave, no quiet hum of Mr Hedges singing to himself in the kitchen.   
  
A small fist of panic lightly punched Nick's insides. If he'd needed to get the bus, he should have left half an hour ago. Saturday bus drivers were even more tempestuous and flighty than weekday ones. He took the stairs to the second floor three at a go.  
  
Mr and Mrs Hedges had kept different bedrooms for as long as Nick could remember. He'd been surprised and a little disapproving that Padraig's and Jack's parents shared a bed the first times he slept over. It made sense on more than one level (the one Nick never, ever thought about in relation to his parents). Mrs Hedges' habits were nocturnal and she was rarely without a showing or soiree to attend until the small hours of the morning, while Mr Hedges had to rise at five in order to get to work on time. Other, smaller issues divided them, like Mrs Hedges being psychotically neat, versus Mr Hedges treating the floor as a combined wardrobe and laundry basket.  
  
Nick had his own bedroom, bathroom and playroom, which was nowadays called his study. He didn't have much occasion to visit his parents' part of the house. In fact, he had to think for a minute to remember which door was his father's.  
  
"Dad?" he called, drumming his knuckles against the most likely candidate. "Dad? You in there?"  
  
A muffled groan assured Nick of life, if not enthusiasm. He waited a minute before continuing, "I have a match in Douglas at eleven ... you said you'd drive me?"  
  
"What? Shit, I -"   
  
Before Nick got over the shock of Mr Hedges - anti-profanity crusader extraordinaire - _swearing_ , there was a loud thump. It sounded very much like Mr Hedges had fallen out of bed.  
  
Nick pushed open the door. "Are you okay? Dad?"  
  
Mr Hedges unwound his limbs from a strangling ribbon of sheet. His legs were skinny and shockingly white: Nick didn't think he'd ever seen them before. His father rotated pinstripe suits and pinstripe pyjamas in an endless and unvarying parade. Except for the times he apparently wore only boxers. Like last night.  
  
"What time is it?" Mr Hedges blearily stared at the alarm clock. It was blinking 00:00.  
  
Nick silently fetched Mr Hedges' glasses from the nightstand and handed them over. His father smelled a bit ... pickled. Nick was well aware of the antique whiskey his father kept in locked cabinets, mainly due to testing the insuperable barrier said locks turned out to be. Up till today, Nick would have said the bottles were only for show. "It's past nine," he told him.  
  
"My head," Mr Hedges informed Nick, "is breaking."  
  
"Did you hit it?" Nick crouched down and tentatively patted Mr Hedges' bald spot. "There's no blood, anyway."  
  
Mr Hedges groaned again. "Get me ... get me the car keys. And about a litre of black coffee."  
  
By the time Mr Hedges shuffled out to the car, in one of his wife's oversized jumpers and bedsocks, it was half past ten. Nick was reconciled to being late and on the point of texting his coach to inform her of the fact when Mr Hedges put his foot on the accelerator - and didn't take it off again for the length of the journey.   
  
Mr Hedges was usually such a sedate driver that in his wake old ladies beeped their horns and flashed him the Vs. Nick might have counted the mounting incongruities and calculated a midlife crisis - if he hadn't been so focused on staring over his shoulder, looking for scorch-marks.   
  
"Are you coming in to watch?" asked Nick, nervously, when they arrived. It was five minutes past eleven.  
  
Mr Hedges just dropped his head on to the steering wheel, making the horn blare. Nick grabbed his kitbag and jumped out.  
  
Laura was waiting for him at the gym door. "Where were you? The coach was expecting you ages ago, Mr Captain Man. I texted you about five times." She peered into the carpark, where Mr Hedges' car still sang the 'I'm being burgled' song. "Is that your dad?"  
  
"No," said Nick. He slammed a hurried kiss against her cheek. "Tell you later."  
  
"Good luck!" Laura called after him. For once, Nick didn't cheekily say, "I won't need it!" He thought, for once, he might.  
  
+++  
  
Nick scratched the back of his neck with his left hand. The angle was awkward, but he was holding Laura's hand with his right one. The first month they were going out, Nick lost count of the times he'd tried to do something with his hand while Laura's was in it. He was better at avoiding it now, and rather proud of the fact that they still held hands a lot. And yet - he hadn't done more than splash his face after the match. The facilities left something to be desired: working plumbing, for starters. While forgoing to wash the practically solid sweat off his hair, he’d forgotten that he and Padraig and Jack and Laura had plans to scam some alcohol at a 'joint Padraig knew.'   
  
"Are you sure about this place?" asked Nick. He didn't want to waste time being laughed at in off-licences when he could be showering. He still hadn't picked out what he was wearing that night, either. Not that you could tell Padraig and Jack something like that: they wore the same, ubiquitous jeans and polo shirts with popped collars everywhere. As it was Nick's unofficial birthday night out, Padraig might choose searing orange instead of white with blue stripes; but as far as sartorial intrepidness went, that was it.  
  
"It's a sure thing," said Padraig. He squinted at his older brother's ID card. "Do I look _much_ like Finbarr, do you think? In this photo, I mean. Not in general."  
  
"Not in general, for sure," said Laura. She exchanged an amused glance with Nick. Finbarr went in for what Padraig dismissively called a 'goth look.' It involved letting his hair grow long, wearing a lot of dusty black and, in previous years, hanging out by the courthouse with a skateboard he couldn't use.   
  
Fortunately the ID picture had been taken before Finbarr started college, where - free from parental constraints and Padraig's scorn - he got as many piercings as would fit on his face, dyed his fringe green and started using eyeliner. Underneath it all, he and Padraig were similar in looks. Both had distinctively long, straight noses. That would be the pivotal factor, Nick reckoned.  
  
"If anything'll convince them, that will," he said. "But couldn't he have, you know, done this _for_ us?"  
  
"Where's the fun in that?" said Jack.  
  
"Exactly." Padraig looped an arm around Nick's neck and jostled him, jerking Laura along in the process. She just laughed. "You're becoming a man, Nick! You need to - I don't know. Prove it."  
  
"I've proved it plenty," said Nick indignantly. Jack wolf-whistled and Laura's hand became slightly vice-like. "I mean - I can drive."  
  
"Kangarooing your dad's car down the driveway does not count," said Padraig.  
  
"Not if you actually want to _go_ somewhere," added Jack. Nick remembered they'd both been pretty impressed at the time.   
  
"Besides," said Padraig, "Fin's having band practice all today. Which is all to the good. The last time I listened to them, they sounded like a bunch of tomcats on heat."  
  
"They got a new guitarist, didn't they?" said Jack.  
  
"What, again?" groaned Laura. "How many does that make?"  
  
"Only three this month," said Padraig. "Good going, for them."  
  
"It's that new kid, from - Roscommon?" said Jack.  
  
"Don't be ridiculous," said Patrick. "No one actually _lives_ in Roscommon. I'm pretty sure it doesn't actually exist."  
  
"He is, though," persisted Jack. "He's in our music class, remember?"  
  
"Remember something from class? Who do you think I am, Laura?"  
  
"Your knuckles must get scratched from dragging them along the ground so much," said Laura. Padraig pretended to grab his chest in agony.   
  
"Robbie," said Jack, the conversation flowing and parting around him, as it habitually did. "Mrs Dubarry said Robert on the roll-call and he said, I prefer to be called Robbie, and she said, I'd prefer if you took that thing out of your lip, and he said, I'd prefer not to, and she said, Would you prefer detention then?"  
  
"Shit, that's a lot of preference," said Padraig.  
  
"That's how it went, though. And he took out his lip ring because he had band practice that afternoon." Jack finished on a triumphant up-note. "Where _were_ you?"  
  
"Asleep, I'd say." Padraig yawned, as if to demonstrate the activity. "Mrs Dubarry should tape her voice as a cure for insomnia, she'd make a fortune."  
  
"Does he have really spiked-up hair?" said Nick, slowly. An image was forming in his mind - an unfamiliar face with dark eyes under a shock of dark hair. Laughing at him. "Robbie?"  
  
"Careful!" yelped Laura, as Nick tripped over a broken paving stone and nearly upset them both.  
  
"Yeah," said Jack. "He's like, Finbarr's _clone_."  
  
"Finbarr, at least, never wore eyeliner to school," said Padraig. "Didn't some teacher ask your man to wash it off and he said why should he if the girls don't?"  
  
"Yes! That was Mrs Dubarry!"  
  
"You don't have to sound so happy about it," grunted Padraig. " _Why_ do they do that? It's so gay."  
  
"Maybe he is gay," Laura pointed out.  
  
"Yeah, well, Finbarr's not."  
  
"But it's a thing, isn't it," said Laura. "A look."  
  
"Still weird," said Padraig.  
  
"You're so narrow-minded, Paudie," said Laura disapprovingly.  
  
"Would you be happy if _your_ boyfriend wore eyeliner?"  
  
Laura hesitated, and Padraig said 'Aha!'  
  
"Shut up," she said. "No, I wouldn't - especially if it was my Mac one. But Nick doesn't. It's not an issue for me, but I don't mind other people doing it."  
  
"Put on a veil, you can be the next Mother Theresa," said Padraig.  
  
"Oh, that's it." Laura dropped Nick's hand in favour of beating Padraig about the head with her D&G handbag.  
  
Nick shook out his fingers, which were slightly cramped and clammy. Thinking about musicians and Finbarr made him remember the time a year ago, when he'd been desperate to learn guitar. Well, not in general, he recalled ruefully. It was learning from _Finbarr_ in particular that was the attraction. It had all come out in one spectacular shouting match with his father - who hadn't shouted, himself, merely listened and kept saying, "Why?" until Nick thought he'd burst of frustration.  
  
Mr Hedges had been great about it, though. It was one of the few unsmudged memories Nick had of his father: Mr Hedges sitting on the edge of Nick's bed and patting his heaving shoulder while calmly explaining that everyone got crushes on other boys at some point. It was okay; it was normal. And he still wasn't shelling out a grand for an electric guitar that would never be used, just to satisfy Nick's hormonal urges.   
  
And it _was_ okay. Nick started taking basketball more seriously and tried out for the school team. At the first post-victory celebration, he'd got off with Laura. Finbarr went off to college around the same time, so Nick didn't have to embarrass himself with reminders every time he went to Padraig's house.   
  
It had been the eyeliner that did it. Unbenownst to anyone else, Finbarr experimented with makeup long before he started wearing it in public. Nick was around fourteen when he first walked in on Finbarr smudging kohl across his eyelids. Once, Nick had even - but that was irrelevant, as irrelevant as his transient interest in learning the guitar. He didn't even take music at school. His mother had talked him out of it in first year. He did art instead and was stupendously bad at it.  
  
"Hey." Laura bumped shoulders with him. "You're a million miles away. You okay?"  
  
"Yeah," said Nick. "Yeah, just thinking about the match."  
  
He took her hand again.   
  
+++  
  
The smell of burned saucepans alerted Nick to his mother's presence in the kitchen. She was sitting in front of a plate of baked beans and toast with a morose expression.  
  
"There's leftover lasagne in the freezer," said Nick, taking pity on her.   
  
"You look fancy," said Mrs Hedges. She narrowed her eyes at him over the microwave. "Off out, are you?"  
  
"Yes, Mam." Nick rolled his eyes. "Finbarr's band's gig, remember? Padraig bought tickets for my birthday."  
  
"I thought those sorts of things were over 18s."  
  
"They are," said Nick, "technically." He didn't feel the need to inform his mother of the fake ID tucked in his back pocket. To do so would implicate her in a petty crime. Also, she'd confiscate it.  
  
"Hmm," said Mrs Hedges. Nick's stomach plummeted.  
  
"You did agree," he said. "You did." It had taken three weeks of alternate sulking and disgusting bouts of niceness to get her permission. For an artist, she was notoriously strict.  
  
An upstairs door banged. Mrs Hedges flinched, her eyes rolling quickly upwards. "Yes, yes," she said. "Hadn't you better be off, then? Don't want to be late."  
  
"I was going to -" began Nick. Mrs Hedges grabbed her purse and almost threw a fifty euro note at him. "Thanks," said Nick, bewildered, "but -"  
  
"Go on, before I change my mind." Mrs Hedges laughed, a teeth-gritting tinkle of sound. She practically pushed him out the back door. Nick heard the lock go behind him.   
  
He shrugged and shoved the money in his jacket. He was grateful that he'd brought it down with him. Clearly, Mrs Hedges was on one of her creative benders.  
  
"Where's Nick?" His father's shadow moved behind the frosted glass. Nick felt an irrational urge to hide.  
  
"Oh, out -" said Mrs Hedges. Nick's feet skimmed the gate as he jumped it, glee filling his soul.  
  
His first gig. It was going to be _awesome_.  
  
+++  
  
The gig was not awesome. The supporting band's drummer harboured a violent desire to beat his instrument into a pulp. Their two guitarists alternately duelled and whirled like dervishes, doing everything in their power to avoid actually playing. As for the lyrics - they reminded Nick of the time he'd tried to read Ulysses, and given up after three pages with a severe headache.  
  
"They suck!" he howled at Padraig. Bright and feverish after five pints, Padraig grinned and nodded.  
  
"They do!" he agreed, and went back to moshing. Despite the lack of a discernable beat to the music, he wasn't alone. Nick supposed enough alcohol conferred musicality to anything.  
  
As he was only two Bulmers under par, he decided to go to the bar. Jack and Padraig began enthusiastically butting heads behind him. Nick only hoped they didn't break anything vital.   
  
Laura was across the floor, looking bored with a group of girls she knew from school. Her favourite music was by Girls Aloud and Leona Lewis; she'd only come to the gig on sufferance, because it was Nick's birthday.   
  
He interrupted an intense conversation about one of their teachers - 'No, Pauline swears she hasn't shaved her legs since the divorce - that was in first year -' - to ask Laura if she wanted a drink.  
  
"I'm good," said Laura. She held up a Barcardi Breezer as proof. "Hey, you know Sorcha, right? And Annette?"  
  
Nick didn't know them from a bar of soap, but he also didn't want to get stuck in a dissection of his relationship with them. A lot of girls - especially predatory blonde ones with fake nails - seemed to think he was wasted on Laura, who had short brown hair, a snub nose and was on the dumpy side of curvy. They apparently didn't understand the concept of _liking_ someone, beyond liking what they saw.   
  
So he simply nodded and said, "Yeah - listen, I just have to go to the jacks. I'll see you in a bit, right?"  
  
Laura smiled at him and leaned over for a kiss. Nick avoided the proffered cheek and kissed her full on the mouth. Give those bitches something to really stare at.   
  
After saying he was going to the bathroom, he couldn't very well skate off to the bar. Once in the men’s room, he discovered just how quickly beer passed through the system, and how fortunate was the lack of queues.   
  
When he came out, there was only one boy there, staring in the mirror and pushing his hair around with an irritated expression. Nick nodded at him and washed his hands. His own hair was falling in his eyes: a cardinal sign that it needed a cut. It was what Nick considered to be an regrettable shade of dark gold, which looked grey in some lights and ginger in others. On the other hand, he was spared Padraig's frizz and Jack's grease, so on the whole he was on to a winner.  
  
The boy beside him evidently thought so too, for he said, "Nice mullet."   
  
There was a tinge of laughter in his voice, but Nick had absolutely no intention of getting into a fight with strange kids. He merely said, "Thanks."   
  
He moved past the boy to get to the hand driers. The bathroom was pokey, but the boy made no effort to facilitate him. In fact, Nick could have sworn he actually stepped backwards a little. Nick didn't like the proximity - the way the edges of their hips brushed - or maybe he liked it too much. He thought he'd conquered this months ago. It made him angry, and when he caught the boy staring at him, all his good resolutions flew out the window.  
  
" _What_?" he snapped.  
  
"Nothing," said the boy. He rubbed his mouth, not quickly enough to hide the smile.   
  
Nick bit off a growl and abandoned the arthritic hand drier, electing instead to wipe his hands off on his jeans. Padraig had whooped when he saw them and whispered _sotto voce_ to Laura, "Watch out, I think he's cut off his meat and veg to get into those." Nick didn't care if Padraig's eyes flashed a little angrily when he said it. Padraig was built like a prop forward and Nick wasn't; he might as well make the most of it.  
  
When he made to push past the boy again, the boy stuck out an arm. It was twined with bits of leather and string masquerading as bracelets, bulging here and there with beads. Nick was a little surprised to see cords of muscle standing out under his skin.   
  
"Don't go just yet," said the boy. He was grinning. "We're having such a fun time."  
  
Nick made a face. Despite what his higher brain suggested, it was a not a 'this is the last day of your life' face - it was just an 'are you for real?' face. "Yeah, it's a happening joint," he said, "the men’s room."  
  
"I've always said so, and no one agreed," said the boy. "Clearly, you're my soulmate."  
  
Nick's heart skipped a beat. Which was odd, because the boy had stopped smiling and pursed his lips instead, making an expression sacred to lemon-haters everywhere.   
  
"I guess," said Nick, lamely.   
  
"That means you have to tell me your name," said the boy. "I can't write moving love songs about you if I don't know your name."  
  
"Nick," said Nick. "But it's okay, really. I'm a cheap date." The words spilled out before he'd even fully thought them, reminding him of the times he'd say things in front of Finbarr that made him ruffle Nick's hair and call him a 'cute kid.'  
  
Something unfurled across the boy's face, lifting the corners of his eyes and mouth. He opened his mouth again, and the door opened too.  
  
" _There_ you are!" snapped Finbarr. Nick sucked in a startled breath, then realised he wasn't the one being addressed. "Onstage in five minutes, Rob, seriously."  
  
"I was just washing my hands," said Robbie. Nick should have recognised him - the hair was wilder and the eyeliner more pronounced, but the way he'd laughed at Nick was exactly the same. "I know you're such a stickler for hygiene around the instruments."  
  
"Dick," said Finbarr, and disappeared. Five seconds later he was back, hanging off the doorknob. "I mean it, dude! Now!"  
  
"Your serenade will have to wait," Robbie said to Nick. Feeling Finbarr's curious eyes on him, Nick blushed. He knew he was, and deeply, because he could see his reflection. "Sorry."  
  
"Stop tormenting the kid," barked Finbarr. Robbie stuck his tongue out - just the tip, at the corner of his mouth, where Finbarr couldn't see - and rolled his eyes. Nick smiled, thought better of it, frowned and blushed some more.  
  
As Finbarr marshalled Robbie out of the bathroom, Nick heard him say, "That's my kid brother's friend. Do you want to go there?"  
  
"Do you want me to answer that?" asked Robbie, before the door swung shut.  
  
Nick gripped the sink very hard with both hands. When he finally met his own eyes, the blush had died down. Nick splashed water on his warm cheeks, gave a mental shake, and headed back into the fray.  
  
+++  
  
When Finbarr's band came out looking like the half-wit lovechildren of Kiss and Meatloaf, Nick knew they'd have to be very, very good to not get booed offstage. Their warm-up band had frozen the crowd over; the ice wasn't cracking for four guys wearing more makeup than most girls present.  
  
That was until they stepped up to the microphones and began to play.  
  
It wasn't a perfect sound and even Nick - by no means a connoisseur of good rock - could tell. Finbarr's voice cracked on some of the high notes. The keyboardist fumbled half the bridges. And yet, the music was a struck match amongst the teenage kegs. They lit up, they danced, they caught the lyrics and sung along to choruses, clashing horribly with Finbarr.  
  
Laura didn't like to dance, so Nick stayed at the edges with her, one arm around her shoulder. He saw Finbarr roll his eyes at his brother every time Padraig pretended to swarm the stage. Jack enthusiastically and completely without rhythm flailed to the music. A bevy of girls screamed Robbie's name every time he rolled his hips into his guitar, a move that brought him to his toes and _should_ have brought him crashing to the floor. Nick detected the gleam of long practice in his triumphant grin.  
  
Nick _might_ have entertained thoughts about Robbie's eyes seeking him out in the crowd. It didn't happen, though. Robbie was totally focused on his playing, which seemed superlative to Nick's untrained eyes. Even the girls bouncing around in their bras didn't distract him, although they drew the attention of Finbarr and the keyboardist more than once, and accounted for at least three fumbled chords apiece.  
  
Nick's feet were aching by the end of the set, in a way he privately thought they might not have if he'd been dancing with his mates. Laura was yawning into her wrist.   
  
"What did you think?" he asked. The roar of the crowd hadn't abated because the music stopped, but it was possible to speak without screaming.  
  
"Oh," said Laura doubtfully, "they were good, I suppose. Very - thrashy. And loud."  
  
"Yeah," said Nick. Thrashy and loud were two suitable adjectives, but they didn't for a minute sum up what the band was truly like.   
  
Padraig bounced up, Jack in tow. "House party at Finbarr's now!" he crowed. "You in?"  
  
"Does Finbarr know we're coming?" asked Nick.  
  
"Duh, he invited us." Padraig rolled his eyes. "His flat is close, we can walk it."  
  
"What do you think?" Nick asked Laura. She made a moue.  
  
"I'm supposed to be home by twelve," she said. "It's nearly that now. I suppose I could - although Dad might stop me going to your party on Friday if he catches me."  
  
"No, it's okay," said Nick. "I'll take you home."  
  
"Don't be silly." Laura kissed his cheek. "You kept me in drink all night, so I've plenty for a taxi."  
  
"If you're sure -"  
  
"I am!" said Laura. "It's your birthday, sort of. Go out and do silly boy stuff. Break a coffee table. Remember, you're getting my present Friday."  
  
A few minutes, hugs and kisses later, Laura left. Padraig guffawed as soon as she was out of earshot.  
  
"What present is that then, eh? Something _special_?"  
  
"One track mind," sighed Nick. "Besides, we already did that."  
  
"You don't even know what -"  
  
"Yes, I do." Nick looked around for Jack. He was eyeing one of the Sorcha-Annette brigade, who was eyeing him back with a lot less hope and a lot more scorn. "C'mon, let's rescue Jack."  
  
"There might be someone blind at this party he can score with," suggested Padraig with his habitual delicacy.  
  
They bumped into Finbarr's band outside, packing a battered van with their equipment. Finbarr blew sweaty hair out of his face as he helped the drummer load his kit. "You guys want a lift?" he asked.  
  
"Sure!" said Jack. "You the man, Finbarr."  
  
"Thanks," said Finbarr dryly. "Paudie, grab that amp."  
  
"What am I, your slave?" grumbled Padraig.  
  
"No," said Finbarr, "you're the toad getting a free lift off me, now move."  
  
Nick stopped looking around for Robbie and crouched to pick up the amp. It was heavier than he'd expected; he let out an involuntary oof of effort. A second later, another pair of hands eased the burden.  
  
"Hey, soulmate," said Robbie.   
  
"Hey," said Nick, colouring up in confusion. "It's okay, I've got it."  
  
"Thanks, but I'll lay down and die before I let someone else carry my amps," said Robbie. "Besides, we should relish this short time we have together."   
  
Nick's ears got hot, and the fingers pressed under Robbie's started to burn. Robbie laughed.   
  
"Where's Kevin?" called Finbarr grumpily. "I'll break his keyboard in half in a minute."  
  
"I'm here, I'm here," said Kevin, dashing around the side of the van. "I got her number!"  
  
"Whose number?" asked the drummer, who might be called Declan.   
  
"I dunno her name," said Kevin. "The one with the huge tits. And the, like, hair."  
  
"I'm so glad he doesn't write our lyrics," breathed Robbie. Nick sniggered.  
  
Declan, Kevin and Finbarr clambered into the cab of the van, leaving the other four to squeeze in as they would among the sharp edges of boxes and cases. Padraig took up most of the room, declaring that it was _his_ brother's van when Jack complained. Jack folded himself up between the amps. Robbie and Nick crouched awkwardly on Kevin’s keyboard.  
  
"I hope we don't break the keys," said Nick, as the van took off at a tempestuous rate.  
  
"He couldn't sound much worse if you did," said Robbie. "We should paint naked women on the black notes, maybe then he'd actually pay attention to what he's playing."  
  
There was an undercurrent of stinging venom to his words. When Nick slanted a glance at him, Robbie's eyes were narrowed. With the reddened rims and the eyeliner carelessly smeared, he looked vicious. As soon as he felt Nick's gaze, Robbie's face cleared.  
  
"I won't ask you what you thought, because you'd have to lie," he said. He stretched out his legs as much as possible in the confined space, brushing one knee rather hard against Nick's.   
  
"I thought you were good," said Nick, "but I'm not any judge of music, really. I don't listen to much."  
  
"Really? I can't imagine that. One time my iPod broke and it was three days before I got it fixed," said Robbie. "I thought I'd eat someone alive," he added reflectively.  
  
"Hmm," said Nick. He tried not to focus on Robbie's hand, curled in a loose fist and pressing into Nick's thigh every time the van hit a bump. The way Finbarr drove, the road might have been made of water balloons. Nick knew he wouldn't even notice if it were Padraig's hand, or Jack's, which made him annoyed and unsettled.  
  
"You guys settled on a name yet?" yelled Padraig from the floor, where he'd managed to appropriate a grimy pillow. "Is it still the dumbass guinea pig one?"  
  
"We're kind of stuck with it now," said Robbie stiffly. "They needed it for the posters and stuff."  
  
"This is going to sound really bad, but what is the band's name?" asked Nick. "We've been calling it 'Finbarr's band' for so long I completely forgot it had any other."  
  
Robbie curled his chin against his shoulder, smiling a little. "We're called Nostradamus Ate My Hamster."  
  
"That's it!" roared Padraig. He was considerably drunker than Nick had realised. "Knew there were bloody rodents in it. Some stupid book of Fin's, right?"  
  
"Right," said Robbie. Nick really wasn't dreaming the bite in his voice. He turned his shoulder, effectively blocking Padraig from view. "I'm really sleepy. D'you mind if I nap on you?"  
  
Nick shrugged. Robbie brought up a hand to cup Nick's shoulder and rested his cheek against it. Within a few minutes he was asleep, or close enough. When Nick shifted a little to check, Robbie made a mewling noise and dug his fingers in, but didn't open his eyes.  
  
"Weirdo," mouthed Padraig. Nick frowned and looked away.  
  
+++  
  
Nick became separated from Robbie as soon as they got through the door of Finbarr's flat. A group of opportunists had been hanging around the courtyard, waiting - or maybe just hoping - to get in. Kevin’s girl was among them, much to his delight, so on Fin's behalf he issued a universal invite. As Fin's fridge was filled with beer and his presses with crisps, the party was soon heaving. Nick lost sight of Robbie when he disappeared into the thronged kitchen. Nick contented himself with the four planks of wood masquerading as an armchair that he'd secured, and the beer that Padraig procured for him. If there was only one bottle of beer left on earth Padraig would have found it, so thirty or forty people crammed into a kitchen designed for anorexic dwarfs posed no problem to him.  
  
Nick recognised a few faces - friends of Fin's, who'd used to come to his house before he stopped living and, recently, visiting there. Nick even got one or two 'Hey, aren't you having your eighteenth soon?', by which Nick guessed that Padraig had been handing out impromptu invites, for god knew what favours in return.  
  
He was halfway down the bottle and feeling pleasantly tingly when a pair of scuffed black Converse separated themselves from the herd. Nick's Converse, at least, were red, but at a party like this one Padraig's deck shoes were the ones that stood out as unique and edgy. There was an ironic life point in that, Nick was sure, but all thoughts of philosophy or indeed shoes faded out of his mind when he looked up and into Robbie's glossy smile.  
  
"Hi, soulmate," said Robbie. Nick decided he'd probably forgotten Nick's actual name - and his own, too, judging by the whiskey on his breath. His balance also wasn't of the best: he collapsed on to the side of Nick's chair and slowly curved towards his lap. Nick just rolled his eyes. Mouth trembling as he fought not to smirk, he poked Robbie into a more vertical position.  
  
"You wouldn't believe," announced Robbie, in the careful tones of the deeply intoxicated, "what I went through trying to find you."  
  
"Oh, yeah?" said Nick. "This flat has three rooms. That must have been hard."  
  
Robbie squinted at him, bringing his whiskey-wet mouth up to Nick's chin so he could stare him (almost) right in the eye. "You mock my valour," he said. "That's not very noble of you. Guinevere wouldn't act like that."  
  
"Hey, how come I'm Guinevere?" objected Nick. "You be Guinevere."  
  
"I don't have the legs for it," said Robbie seriously. Nick, torn between laughter and entering a more detailed debate on the merits of Robbie's legs - solid, swathed in black jeans that rode low even with a sparkly belt - chose laughter as the safe option. It didn't feel quite so safe when Robbie joined in and Nick could feel his chest heave against his shoulder.  
  
"Gimme your hand," said Robbie. Nick was afraid to open his mouth for fear of what might come out, so he complied in silence. Robbie roughly pulled Nick's arm across his lap, not seeming to care that it was attached to the rest of him, and bent his head low over it. Nick could see a few tiny spots at the edge of his jaw, revealed as his long hair fell over his face, and felt momentarily terrified. It was too much, too invasive, too intimate, to see the skin behind someone's ear as they sat in your lap.  
  
Fortunately - or unfortunately - Robbie chose that moment to distract him, by stabbing him.  
  
"Ow!" said Nick, indignant. Robbie ignored him in favour of stabbing him again, harder this time. "What are you doing?"  
  
"Shh," said Robbie. "You'll frighten the muse." He looked up into Nick's face and smiled, and Nick realised Robbie was writing on his arm.  
  
"Where'd you get the pen?" he asked, referring to a fine specimen of the fountain breed, with a gold and black nib.  
  
"I found it in a drawer when I was looking for forks," said Robbie.  
  
"Yes, I can see how - ouch!" Robbie had pressed in deeply, but gave Nick a look of the most utmost and benign innocence.  
  
"So what are you writing?" asked Nick and, more urgently, "Will it wash off?"  
  
"Wait and see and no, never." Robbie curled his arm protectively around Nick's imprisoned hand. Nick shrugged and took a swig of beer. The bottle was nearly gone, so Nick didn't have much to choke on when Robbie said, meditatively, "Damn," and leaned down to lick Nick's arm.  
  
"What the fuck?" spluttered Nick.  
  
"I got a word wrong." Robbie pouted, more effectively than even he probably realised. His lower lip was shiny under the bare flurogen lamps. "Don't make such a fuss, I don't have hepatitis."  
  
"It's not that," said Nick lamely. Reluctant to say what it was, he subsided, feeling the damp spot on his arm dry and itch as Robbie continued to scribble diligently.  
  
"Will you be finished anytime soon?" he asked after a while. A lot of people had paired off at this point, for the usual reasons. None of them were having their arms written on or their legs half-crushed by a paper-deprived scribe. Not that Nick wanted option B normal either - so he talked.  
  
"Would you rush genius?" demanded Robbie.  
  
"If it had a curfew, yeah," said Nick.  
  
A frown of disappointment twisted up Robbie's face. He swiped the sleeve of his unbuttoned check shirt over Nick's arm, taking a smearing of ink with it.  
  
"Hey!" protested Nick. He snatched his arm away, but it was too late. All that was left of Robbie's work of staggering genius was a cloud of smudges and a few tightly scrawled words. Nick made out _eyes filled up with blue_ , which didn't make a whole lot of sense considering Nick's eyes were brown. But of course, Robbie might not have been writing about _him_ \- just using his arm as a sketchpad.  
  
Robbie bounced to his feet, leaving Nick groaning with the sudden-onset pins and needles. "Come on, then," he said.  
  
"Where are we going?" Nick was already rising to his feet, limping a little for dramatic effect.  
  
"Curfew," said Robbie, ducking his head in a way that brought a dark glittery shadow to his face. "I'll escort you home."

+++

Nick knew he should find an undoubtedly paralytic Padraig, and rescue Jack from an irate female, and thank his hosts, and bid them all goodnight (or early morning). Instead, he followed Robbie like an enchanted lamb out into the still cold night. The sounds of revelry diminished abruptly as they stepped out of the foyer. Robbie puffed out a frosty breath and tucked his hands into the pockets of his leather bomber. Nick fished for his toque in his peacoat. Padraig had nearly died laughing when he first saw that coat, and still told everyone that Nick had bought it in Oasis. Nick didn't care - or rather, he cared, but he liked his coat more.   
  
Robbie brushed a palm across Nick's wool-covered elbow. "Nice coat," he said. Despite the chill, Nick flushed with warmth.  
  
As they turned on to the street, Nick asked uncertainly, "Which way are you going?" Robbie glanced up at him with bruised eyes.   
  
"I'm hurt you have to ask," said Robbie. "I'm going with you. To defend you from all the dastardly terrors of the night."  
  
"Like muggers?" They were in fairly short supply in Blackrock.  
  
"I was thinking dragons," admitted Robbie, "but whatever you're having yourself."  
  
Nick looked down at Robbie's wiry frame. He could practically fit under Nick's arm. "Do you, like, know jujitsu?" Maybe Robbie had hidden thug-bashing skills.  
  
"No," said Robbie, looking disgusted by the very prospect. "But I have a sword and I've seen Lord of the Rings about five hundred times, so."  
  
"A sword?" Nick was interested. "On you?"  
  
"Why, yes," leered Robbie. He grabbed his crotch. "A huge sword."  
  
"Shut up," laughed Nick. "Like that'd be a great help in a fight."  
  
"Sure it would be," said Robbie. "I'd just have to tell them that gay is catching."  
  
After a beat, Nick said, "No, it's not."  
  
"Are you sure?" Robbie bumped into Nick rather hard.  
  
Nick thought about the strange jumping feeling he used to get in his belly when Finbarr was around. At first he'd blamed Finbarr for making him _that way_ , with his hands and his guitar and the way his laugh made Nick smile. Over the past few years, though, he'd realised that other boys did that to him too. If he'd caught anything from Finbarr, it was a key that unlocked a hidden side of himself.  
  
"Pretty sure, yeah," he said.   
  
Robbie appeared to digest this. "Yeah. Explaining bisexuality to knacks is probably a wasted effort, anyway."  
  
"Usually they just want money," said Nick. "Of course, you might have the upper hand if you really had a sword..."  
  
"I do have a sword!" protested Robbie. "Look, I'll prove it."  
  
"No, that's okay," said Nick - hastily, and too late. Robbie's hands were on the buckle of his glittery belt, and he was going to flash Nick on a deserted leafy street at three in the morning. Nick wheeled away to stare at a wall, heart beating so fast it crushed his lungs. He didn't feel jumpy so much as cloud-light and dizzy.  
  
"Look, dammit," said Robbie. He grabbed Nick's wrist and spun him around.  
  
Robbie wasn't naked. He'd pushed the waistband of his jeans over one jutting hipbone, under which was tattooed a tiny, intricate sword. The clean black lines stood out starkly against his pale brown skin. The crinkly line of hair under his navel stood out even more starkly, to the point where Nick had to drag his eyes away from it and concentrate to breathe.  
  
"That's cool," said Nick, honestly, although he'd only got a fleeting glimpse. Robbie shook his head sadly. The chink of his belt dragging through the loops echoed against Nick's skull.  
  
"It's so sad, the way you doubt me," he said.  
  
"Do you have any other tattoos?" Nick had a vague idea that you had to be eighteen to get them, but he figured minor details like that never hindered anything in Robbie's life.  
  
"Yes," said Robbie demurely, "but you don't get to see those until we're better acquainted."  
  
"Why - oh." Nick blushed. Robbie smirked, and grabbed Nick's hand. Nick didn't mind this too much, even though Robbie's palm was a bit sweaty - at least until Robbie pushed him into a hedge.   
  
"Ow!" Nick began to protest, only to have the wind knocked out of him when Robbie jumped into the hedge as well, toppling them both. "What are you doing?"  
  
"Shh!" Robbie mimed zipping his lips shut, then proved how singularly ineffective that was by adding, "They'll hear you."  
  
"Who?" Nick was pretty sure the only people likely to hear them were the owners of the house a hundred feet or so from the hedge. They probably wouldn't take kindly to finding two tipsy boys in their greenery. Nick and Robbie were lucky that it was a better off part of town, meaning the houses weren't flush with the pavement. Nick was still disinclined to linger.  
  
Robbie crouched down lower as the purring crunch of wheels became audible. Nick tried to shift to a position that didn't involve Robbie lying across his lap, only to have Robbie shush him angrily. A pair of headlights floated lazily along the road, followed seconds later by a large car. From Robbie's horrified hisses, Nick expected to see sunglasses'd mafiosos in the front seat at least. Instead, he saw a middle-aged couple. The woman was yawning.  
  
Nick figured it was better to let the car pass completely before speaking again. He judged correctly, because Robbie went floppy with relief as soon as the engine sounds faded away.   
  
"Well done," said Robbie, voice muffled by roots. "You're very good at hiding from demons."  
  
Nick began to think that Robbie was severely unhinged. That didn't stop his heart fluttering when Robbie rolled back out on to the pavement and pulled Nick up by the hand. He didn't let go until they reached the pool of light under the next lamppost, when he dropped it like a used condom.  
  
"My house is just up ahead." Nick massaged his wrist where Robbie had seized it earlier. "Do you, like, wanna come in?"  
  
"It's practically dawn." Robbie smiled up at him through downcast lashes. "Don't you think that would impugn your manly virtue?"  
  
"No," said Nick vaguely, having very little idea of what Robbie meant.   
  
The light was on in Nick's kitchen when they crept round to the back, but it was deserted and - as they discovered when Nick unlocked the door - cold. It looked like someone had been having a midnight snack, because there were crumbs on the table and a plate in the sink. Nick opened the fridge to get a drink.  
  
"Wow," breathed Robbie over his shoulder, standing on tiptoe. "You have, like, every liquid known to man in here."  
  
Nick shifted his balance to the foot farthest from Robbie. "Not exactly," he hedged. "No liquid nitrogen, for one."  
  
But Robbie was closer to the truth than Nick. Mrs Hedges attempted to cater to her guests' every whim, and because she had so many at such unexpected times it was easier to keep everything possible on hand. Nick decided to keep Robbie away from the pantry.   
  
"Would you like something?" asked Nick. Robbie made a 'hmm'ing noise and bounced up high enough to rest his chin on Nick's shoulder. He had to stretch a lot to get there; Nick could feel the tug of their shirts sliding together.   
  
"What's that?" Robbie pointed under Nick's arm at a glass bottle containing dark liquid.  
  
Nick repressed a shiver before he replied, "Sarsparilla. Tastes like Coke, sorta."  
  
"Hmm. And that?" This time, Robbie stretched across Nick's chest to prod a luridly pink container.   
  
"Creaming soda. That one is totally gross."  
  
"I'll have it," Robbie decided.   
  
"They're your tastebuds," said Nick. He grabbed tropical juice for himself. He had to shuffle around Robbie to close the fridge door: Robbie was far too interested in examining the contents of his silver can to make way. It reminded Nick too much of their first meeting in the men's room, especially when Robbie jabbed him accidentally with a bony brown elbow. Despite the cold night and the even colder kitchen, he had already shed his leather jacket in favour of a t-shirt proclaiming its allegiance to the Mighty Boosh.   
  
Robbie finally took a sip of the creaming soda; Nick watched in interest as he winced before he swallowed. Robbie tilted his head to one side, sucking on his lips, and asked, "Got any straws?" Nick tripped over a chair on his way to the drawer.   
  
"I can't get over your fridge, man," Robbie marvelled. "Why do you have so many drinks? Do you guys run a speakeasy?"  
  
"Yes," said Nick. "Bootleggers just go wild for that creaming soda."  
  
Robbie smacked his lips. Nick wished he wouldn't. "I can see why," said Robbie. He smiled at Nick, possibly for the first time. His teeth all seemed to veer wildly towards the middle.   
  
"Nah, it's just my mother." Nick swirled his carton of juice. "She believes in having whatever the guest wants in the house."  
  
"So do you keep vinegar in the fridge?"  
  
"No - why?"  
  
"It's Jesus' favourite drink," said Robbie. He hooked a chair leg with his foot and dragged it towards him. "And according to many people his second coming is due any day now, if he isn't already here. He might just rock up to your house demanding a drink and a room at the inn. No, wait, that was his mother."  
  
"Jesus likes vinegar," echoed Nick, scepticism drowning out his confusion at the way Robbie sucked up soda through a straw. Or rather, confusion at why that made him confused - and hot and shivery, too, like he was developing a twenty-four hour fever. It was probably just the beer. "And you know this how?"  
  
"Read the Bible if you don't believe me." Robbie swung gracefully into the chair and knocked another one in Nick's direction. "Sit down, you giant, you're making me feel Lilliputian. Yeah, vinegar. Mohammed, on the other hand, he liked mai tais."  
  
Nick assumed, from the way he wasn't being struck down by two completely different brands of lightning, that Robbie knew what he was talking about. He sat down carefully, so as not to spill his drink. "What about Buddha?"  
  
"Don't be stupid -" scathingly. "Buddha didn't drink."  
  
"Right," said Nick, "of course." His hands and feet felt numb, while the rest of him was burning up. He wondered if he had swine flu.  
  
Their chairs were pulled out from the table in such a way that Nick was sitting at right angles to Robbie, their knees brushing. Robbie jumped a little at the contact, which gave Nick an amazing, terrifying idea. He set his drink on the table in case he spilled it and, ignoring Robbie's concerned question, put his own hand on Robbie's knee and kissed him full on the mouth.  
  
Which was, of course, when his father walked in.  
  
+++  
  
Mr Hedges was dressed in his usual crisply-pressed pyjamas, old man slippers and a quilted dressing gown. The day-old stubble was a new feature, but one Nick didn't have much time to dwell on. For one thing, his father looked angry, which was about as common as seeing a violent duckling. For another, Robbie had jumped away - _before_ Mr Hedges came in - and was sipping at his creaming soda like he had no other ambition in life.   
  
"Ah," said Mr Hedges, surveying his son, "you're back. Late."  
  
"Ma said -"  
  
"I think you should go to bed now," said Mr Hedges with finality. "Particularly if you want to live to see your eighteenth birthday, let alone celebrate it."  
  
"But Robbie -"  
  
"Will be taken home by me," said Mr Hedges. He squinted at Robbie. "Are you new?"  
  
"To Nick or the planet?" asked Robbie. Remarkably, Mr Hedges' mouth twisted in what he considered to be a smile.   
  
"How far away is your house?" he asked.  
  
"Oh, just down the road. I can walk."  
  
"If you're sure," said Mr Hedges, who had once driven along beside a complaining Padraig the whole two miles to his house to make sure he got there safely and, more importantly, without detours.   
  
"He can't walk alone," protested Nick, "it's the middle of the night. There could be -" Nick thought of Robbie's concerns about dragons "- bad people," he finished lamely.   
  
"I'll be fine," said Robbie. Nick nearly jumped at the brusqueness in his tone. "See you around, Nick."  
  
He slung his jacket around his shoulders as he slalomed to the back door, every step like dancing. _He does know my name_ , was all Nick could think.   
  
"Who was -" his father began, then shivered his head. "Never mind. Aren't you in bed yet?"  
  
"I'm just going, Dad," said Nick meekly. He filched the half-empty can of creaming soda on his way.  
  
+++  
  
On Monday, the school was abuzz with talk of Nick's eighteenth. He was one of the first to have his birthday in the year, and as his parents were among the richest in the class, everyone was sure it was going to be a huge hit. Everyone, that is, except Nick, who'd had the least hand of all in planning it. He'd managed to veto Padraig's idea of a stripper cake, and prevent Jack from mentioning the idea in front of his mother - but the rest was out of his hands. Half the invitation list was made up of strangers, both friends of his mother's and those to whom she owed favours. He'd caught a glimpse of the invites before she'd posted them, all blue swirly decorations with brushings of gold, and the dress code was black tie. Nick didn't own a black tie; but he supposed, as the nominal reason for the party’s existence, he could get away with wearing his blue one.   
  
He met Padraig near the vending machines, their habitual hang-out. Padraig was in the middle of outlining his plan to secrete some of Mrs Hedges' party drinks into Nick's room so they could have a little celebration of their own, but he happily began again from the start so Nick could hear it all. Nick interjected a few 'hmm's, with the occasional 'hmm!' for variety, to keep Padraig occupied while he scanned the yawning crowds for Robbie.   
  
Flocks of girls passed by, discussing what dresses they'd wear on Friday and sending drifts of dried mascara Nick's way. A number of boys from his class clapped him on the shoulder. Nick was probably the most popular kid in school right then, yet the only person he wanted to talk to wasn't around.  
  
Or was ignoring him, Nick thought with an unhappy flash, as he caught a glimpse of brown fists and string bracelets battling their way through the crowds. He left Padraig and Jack mid-debate over the merits of Coors versus Bulmers and pushed his way towards the lockers. His height and general standing would usually have guaranteed him a swift passage, but today yet more people wanted to congratulate him on the magnificent achievement of having stayed alive long enough to throw them a party.   
  
Nick was glad to see Robbie still at his locker when he got there, even though the first bell had rung. Nick's first class was a free study period, so he wasn't too bothered about being a few minutes late. Robbie, on the other hand, might be a stickler for punctuality: he had a pile of books in the crook of his arm as he rummaged in his locker for more. Nick stifled a laugh as he saw the biro stuck into Robbie's stiffly gelled hair.   
  
On closer inspection Robbie looked tired. His eyeliner was smudged, like he hadn't reapplied it since Saturday, and there were crinkly bits in his otherwise straight-ironed hair. Just seeing him gave Nick a stupid sense of joy, though, so he tapped Robbie's arm and said, "Hey," nursing the most ridiculous smile.  
  
Robbie started, smashing his wrist into the locker door. "Oh, hey," he said, without enthusiasm. Nick's smile dimmed. He'd wondered if Robbie was mad at him, but told himself he'd just imagined it.   
  
"I was wondering," he said slowly, "if you wanted to come to my birthday party on Friday. It's at the house, so you know where that is. If you'd been here longer you would have got an invite anyway, so..." His voice trailed off as Robbie kept his eyes fixed on the messy stacks of books in his locker, as if they held a thrilling fascination for him.  
  
"Friday - yeah, I don't think that'll work for me," said Robbie. "I have a family thing."  
  
"Oh." Nick stepped back, feeling a gulf widening between them. "Oh, I guess that's - well, if you change your mind."  
  
"This thing is sort of iron-clad," said Robbie. He looked at Nick for the first time and Nick wished he hadn't. "Thanks, though."  
  
"Okay." Nick's suddenly-numb lips didn't move properly, so he didn't trust himself to say anything more. He gave Robbie an aborted head-nod and turned away. His locker was at the other end of the hall and he manoeuvred to it blindly. He smiled at half a dozen people with a sprained motion of the lips, but none of them seemed to notice anything out of the ordinary.   
  
Beside him, a girl's phone went off, the dulcet tones of Katy Perry announcing that she'd kissed a girl. Nick groaned and thumped his head against his locker. That was one of Laura's favourite songs - Laura who Nick hadn't spared a thought for all day yesterday. He was so, so screwed.  
  
+++  
  
Laura and Nick always had lunch together. They didn't share any classes and their lockers were at opposite ends of the building, so lunch was the only time they were guaranteed to see each other. Padraig, Jack and one or two of Laura's friends usually joined them.   
  
Nick, the only one of them taking Honours history, didn't spy any of his friends when joining the queue for the school dinner. After being served with an unnameable and indescribable slop, he made his way to their table by the window. He rested his cheek in one hand and spooned up his lunch without taking much notice of it, while he stared out the window at the matching grey street and grey sky. November, not April, was the cruellest month, he decided, forgetting all the times he'd enjoyed November most of any month because it meant everyone making a fuss of him on his birthday.  
  
He looked up at the clatter of a tray hitting Formica and dropped his spoon. Great brown drops splattered the front of his white shirt. Swearing, he grabbed a wad of napkins and tried fruitlessly to sponge away the stains.   
  
"Here, let me," said a brisk voice, and Robbie reached over the table. He'd wetted napkins from the bottle of spring water on his tray. Nick was pretty sure they didn't sell that in the school canteen, but he was distracted from the thought by the scientific way Robbie pulled Nick’s shirt taut by the collar and started massaging the stains. The cold water soaking through to his skin smarted. Nick hissed through his teeth.   
  
"Better," said Robbie critically, "but you still look like you dribbled on yourself. Which, essentially, you did. Do you have a spare shirt with you?"  
  
"No," Nick forced out. He'd refused his mother's urging to do so since he was twelve years old. Up till now, he'd proven her wrong.  
  
Robbie shrugged and sat down. "You'd better put your jumper on then," he advised. As the heating in the school was having one of its rare but furnace-like on days, Nick was extremely reluctant to comply. Robbie's own jumper was knotted across his shoulders, so he looked like a method actor penduluming between Danny Zuko and Sebastian Flyte. All the other boys had their jumpers tied around their waists, like Nick.  
  
As Robbie picked at his lunch - from plastic boxes, clearly homemade - separating his salad from his couscous, he looked the picture of unconcern. Nick, whose appetite had gone the same way as his shirt, eventually blurted, "What are you doing here?"  
  
Robbie looked up in surprise. "Performing the intricate mating ritual of the Watigami tribe. What does it _look_ like?"  
  
Nick refused to examine the implications of the words 'mating ritual' in this context. At that moment Laura arrived, Padraig and Jack arguing at her heels. Laura planted a kiss on Nick's hair and said happily, "I invited Robbie to eat lunch with us. Have you been chatting? Isn't he gas?"  
  
"Absolutely," muttered Nick, refusing to meet Robbie's eyes. On the other side of the table, Padraig pushed Jack so he had to take the seat beside Robbie. Jack gave Padraig a hurt look and rubbed his arm before sitting down.  
  
"What are you eating?" Jack asked Robbie. "It looks nice. It must have been all gone when I got there."  
  
"Just a Greek salad," said Robbie. "And I brought it from home. You want some?"  
  
"Yeah!" Jack was instantly cheered as Robbie tipped half his salad and a few cubes of goats' cheese on to Jack's plate. Nick loved goat's cheese. He resolutely pushed his plate away.   
  
"Are you finished already, sweetie?" Laura looked concerned.   
  
"Yeah, I gotta go - stuff." Nick replaced his usual goodbye kiss with an awkward pat and stumbled off towards the bathrooms.  
  
The damage was worse than he thought. His usually maroon tie was now polka-dotted with gravy. Smears of it swirled, snail-like, all the way to his belt. With a sigh, Nick pulled his shirt over his head. In spite of the tropical heating it was still fairly chilly in the bathrooms, where the windows were perpetually open to clear the choking scent of bleach and other, less salubrious odours. He shivered a little as he ran water into one of the two sinks not filled with sodden paper towels and started scrubbing.   
  
A few weary minutes later and the stains began to dissipate slightly. Nick rested his hands on the sink and stared at himself in the mirror. Red-faced with effort and his hair hanging limply in his eyes, his reflection stared back. "Beautiful," Nick told himself sardonically.  
  
"Agreed," said a voice from the door. Nick spun around so fast he almost slipped on the wet tiles. Robbie leaned against the jamb, arms crossed in an unwelcoming manner. Nick scooped up his dripping shirt and held it before him like a shield. Robbie switched his gaze to the mirror and he walked forward to investigate his own face. He twirled a lock of hair around his finger and added, "Laura sent me to look for you. She's worried about you."  
  
"I'll text her," said Nick automatically.  
  
"You do that," said Robbie. He smoothed his eyebrow with his little finger and turned to face Nick. "That shirt won't dry itself, you know," he said, with the faintest hint of amusement. Nick shoved his wet bundle under the hand driers. Robbie shook his head. "You're extremely useless, you do know that," he informed Nick, taking hold of the end of the shirt and stretching it out under the heat. "Does your mammy still do your washing or something?"  
  
"No, our maid does that," said Nick unthinkingly. Robbie raised his eyebrows and hit the button to restart the drier.  
  
"This party of yours is all everyone's talking about," said Robbie, talking loudly over the asthmatic wheezes of the drier. Nick shrugged. Robbie's eyes were level with his collarbones, and all he wanted to do was hunch away from Robbie's thoughtful gaze. "You're not the only one who's invited me to it. Jack seemed to assume I was coming, and Laura asked me too. Nice girl, your _girlfriend_."  
  
"Look, about before -" began Nick.   
  
"I think this is dry," said Robbie. He pushed the shirt at Nick. It felt a little damp, still.   
  
"Robbie," called Nick. Robbie halted midstride but didn't turn around. "I'm sorry," said Nick, more softly.  
  
Robbie's chin twitched. "Yeah? Me too," he said, and left the room.  
  
+++  
  
Nick wasn't by nature a sneaky person. It was hard to keep track of Robbie amongst the hordes of yammering students, but Nick had to hold back so he wouldn't be seen. Getting on to the same bus as Robbie without Robbie spotting him had been a feat worthy of 007, but Nick felt he'd nearly used up his meagre store of ingenuity.   
  
Nick got off a stop early in order to follow Robbie, keeping behind a swarm of primary school children who insisted on pressing the buzzer multiple times, in case the driver should somehow mistake their intentions. Robbie walked quite slowly with his head bent, making him easy for a budding spy to track. Nick could see his own estate glinting yellowly in the distance when Robbie turned down between two faux-marble pillars, one bearing a brass placard and the inscription: 'Maple Grove, 1-10'. Nick ducked down behind the nearest pillar and watched as Robbie went into number two. Nick remained there in nail-biting contemplation of his options until a number of the buzzer-happy primary school children stopped to look at him suspiciously. Spurred into action, Nick shoved his hands in his pockets and nonchalantly wandered towards what he assumed to be Robbie's house, as if that had been his intention all along.  
  
The houses of this estate were red-brick clad in a particularly searing shade, adorned with over-confident square windows set asymmetrically into the frontage. All the front doors were encased in mini-conservatories of extreme ugliness. Robbie's had a pretty windchime hanging from the ceiling, made of wooden birds with blue glass eyes. It tinkled against Nick’s shoulder as he slid open the outer door and rang the bell.  
  
Nick played with the handle of his schoolbag to distract his hands while he waited for someone to answer the door. He'd been expecting Robbie and was rehearsing casual ways of saying, "So I stalked you just now," so he was caught on the hop when a woman answered the door.  
  
She couldn't be anyone but Robbie's mother. She had the same dark hair and eyes, only her hair had coarse strands of grey twined through it and her eyes were sunk in a pit of wrinkles. She was even wearing a housecoat, which Nick thought only happened in Father Ted. Her smile was warm, however, even though Nick was very conscious of his dirty tie.  
  
"Hi," he said, and coughed out the high note in his voice. "I was looking for Robbie?"  
  
"Oh! You must be from St Vincent's," said the woman. "Come in, come in. Robbie hasn't brought home any friends yet. Well, actually," her brow darkened, "he said he'd never met such uncouth louts in his life, but - anyway! What's your name?"  
  
"Nick Hedges," said Nick. "I live in the Queenway estate down the road. Are you Robbie's mother?"  
  
"Yes, of course." Robbie's mother had a habit of pressing her chest when she laughed, as if she were trying to hold in the sound. "Forget my own head if it wasn't stuck on. I'm Frances Kincaid - but please, call me Frances. Mrs Kincaid is my mother."  
  
"Sure - Frances." At the end of the hallway Nick could see a kitchen. On either side two glass-pannelled doors opened on to a living room and appeared to be a gym. Nick didn't recognise half the equipment, though. There was one piece that looked like an extra-long treadmill with handrails. Robbie hadn't struck him as a gym bunny, but then again he could have ten siblings who were all fanatics. Nick hardly knew him.  
  
"Robbie!" called Frances up the stairs. There was no reply. "Probably listening to his music," she said to Nick, in the same way someone else would say, 'Performing Satanic rituals on goats.' "You might as well go on up - he'll never hear you otherwise. It's the second door on the left."   
  
"Thanks," said Nick. Frances disappeared into the kitchen. Nick carefully deposited his bag by the stairs and began to climb them, hyper-aware of every creak. As he rounded the turn he could hear the faint sound of thudding base. Every so often the insipid Lalique figurines on the landing window jumped in four-four time.  
  
There was no mistaking which was Robbie's door. The others were open, revealing a master bedroom in cream and blue and another with a bed so heaped in frills it was practically spherical. Robbie's door was painted black with green and white zebra stripes. A yellow triangle declared 'No entry'. It was a pretty forbidding sight, but Nick knocked anyway.  
  
"I'm busy!" came Robbie's irritated voice.   
  
Nick decided holding a debate through a closed door was not the best way to resolve things. The handle, when he tried it, was unlocked, so he pushed open the door. Robbie sat on the bed, one leg tucked underneath the other, cradling a bright blue guitar. It wasn't the one he had played on Saturday night. Nick had time to take in the three other instruments standing by the wall before Robbie looked up.  
  
The expression on his face caught fast between horror and surprise. Before he could say anything, Nick launched in with, "Look, I wanted to talk to you. I wanted to explain -"  
  
"There's nothing to explain," said Robbie chillingly. "You were drunk and reckless and you decided to mess around. Unfortunately for you, I don't do messing around. I value myself a bit more highly than that."  
  
"Yes, you should," said Nick. Robbie looked taken aback at his eagerness. "I wasn't - I mean. I didn't plan on doing that."  
  
"If by that you mean cheating on your girlfriend, who by the way is far too nice to deserve that," said Robbie, "then lack of forward planning does not absolve you."  
  
"Look, I came here to apologise and see if you wanted to be friends," said Nick. "Clearly you don't, so - whatever." He flung his hands into his pockets. "I'll see you around."  
  
He put his hand on the door handle but felt reluctant to open it, to step outside the room and leave Robbie behind for good. There was a pause while Nick willed himelf to press down.  
  
He'd just about managed it when Robbie said, quietly, "Friends?"  
  
+++  
  
Nick pulled his aching fingers straight. They'd been so long in one cramped position he was afraid they'd frozen that way. "This is hard," he complained to Robbie.  
  
"How strange," murmured Robbie. He lay on his back with the blue guitar on his chest. "Usually learning an entirely new instrument from scratch is stupidly easy."  
  
"Shut up," said Nick, and biffed him on the head with one of the throw pillows he was sitting on. Robbie sat up, all outraged dignity, and Nick fell about laughing at the state of his hair. He looked like an affronted parakeet, so Nick couldn't resist hitting him again.   
  
"Hey, hey, mind the guitar -"   
  
Nick subsided long enough for Robbie to carefully set aside his guitar - and to grab a pillow to smack Nick right in the head. Nick howled, more in surprise than pain.   
  
"Serves you right," said Robbie smugly. "God, it's already half five."  
  
Nick sat up straight. "I'd better go. Marita will be expecting me."  
  
"Your curfew is that early?"  
  
"No, but Marita gets hurt if I don't show up for dinner," Nick explained, hunting around for his tie, which he'd discarded early on in the proceedings. Robbie discovered it under a corner of the duvet and Nick beamed at him. "I'll see you tomorrow?"  
  
"Or I could call around later," suggested Robbie, the image of casual except for the drumline he was beating on the mattress. "My mother's making chocolate cake and she always forgets there aren't five of us at home anymore."  
  
Nick's eyes lit up. "Cake? Yeah, yeah, come over."  
  
"I can see which of us is more welcome," observed Robbie. He got to his feet with a wince and rubbed at his left knee. He’d been favouring it all evening.  
  
"Are you okay?" Nick was always alive to the possibility of high impact knee injuries in his basketball career, though it was doubtful Robbie had any such way of incurring them.   
  
"Fine, fine," Robbie brushed him off. "I'll see you about eight, then."  
  
"I'll be waiting," Nick promised.  
  
+++  
  
Nick went one better than waiting. He kept a lookout from his bedroom window, in between making half hearted stabs at an essay on the Dreyfus affair. His house was built on a slope, so his third-floor bedroom provided a substantial view of the surrounding roads and next door's gardens, if that was your idea of a good time. (Once, Nick had seen his two elderly neighbours cavorting in the garden, well past midnight, wearing matching bloomers and nothing else - apparently in celebration of the Joyce centenary. But that was definitely not Nick's idea of a good time.)   
  
Robbie's head came into view; he was walking slowly up the path. Nick jumped from his seat and raced out into the winter night, heedless that he was dressed in only bright purple basketball shorts and a singlet. He met Robbie at the gate.  
  
"Oh, hi, Ryan Atwood," said Robbie. "Is Nick around here someplace?"  
  
"Ha," said Nick. He swiped at his arms, trying to ward off the cold. "Come in. Did you bring the cake?"  
  
Robbie held up a Tupperware container as proof. "I kept some back for tomorrow's lunch, too. Jack might fancy a piece."  
  
"Jack's got three stomachs like a cow, he'd eat anything," said Nick, cruelly insulting Mrs Kincaid's culinary skills.   
  
"There's a really fancy car just outside your gate," said Robbie, as Nick fumbled with the icily slick latch on the side gate.   
  
"There's really fancy cars all over this area, in case you hadn't noticed - ow!"  
  
"Here, let me." Robbie handed the Tupperware box over the gate and expertly flipped the latch through the bars. He came prepared for the weather with matching navy gloves and a scarf, although his ears and nose were triplet rubies. "What you say is true, but I've never seen a red Ferrari before. Do you think it belongs to a crimelord?"  
  
"There are no politicians living around here," objected Nick. He stepped through the gate, clutching the Tupperware box like a muff.   
  
The red sports car stood out like a clown's nose at a funeral. Nick was right when he said most of the people in the neighbourhood drove expensive cars, but they were usually black or blue or grey - subtle. Subtle wasn't the first word that sprung to mind on seeing the Ferrari, unless it came preceded by ‘extremely un’.  
  
The car sat low on the ground, protected from the elements by what seemed a flimsy leather hood. The seats were occupied by two people engaged in what looked like a spirited argument.  
  
With a shock that was like an electrical jolt, Nick realised the man in the passenger seat was his father - but his father with his features moulded by anger and his hair in his face, gesticulating wildly. Nick looked past Robbie, peering in to see who his father's opponent was, and got a flash of silver rings.  
  
All of a sudden Nick felt over-exposed and very, very cold. Robbie had long since lost interest in the car and was waiting on Nick's front stoop with admirable patience. Nick crept back through the gate before his father could see him.   
  
+++  
  
Robbie caught up with Nick at his locker as the last bell was fading to nothing more than an irritating buzz behind the eardrums.  
  
"Come down town with me," said Robbie, in his best wheedling tone.  
  
"I can't," said Nick, half-laughing, half-regretful. "I have basketball practice."  
  
"Come down town," said Robbie. "We'll get hot chocolate at O'Conail's and laugh at the skateboarders and pretend to be pretentious art students in the Crawford and then -" he brandished two white slips of paper "- we'll go to a concert."  
  
"On a Tuesday night? Who good would play on a weekday?"  
  
"Oh, I don't know," said Robbie. "Maybe Fred are playing an underground gig. Maybe they have even more secret special guests. But you'll never know, because you're not coming."  
  
"I could come later," said Nick. "But I have to go to basketball practice first..."  
  
Robbie walked away backwards, fanning the tickets against his lips. "I'll wait by the bus stop for ten minutes."  
  
"Robbie!" pleaded Nick, through a laugh. But Robbie shook his head, grinning, and dived into the crowd, leaving Nick in a welter of indecision.   
  
Robbie was staring at the sides of his shoes when Nick walked up, dragging a bag heavy with his basketball gear. He felt a tear of guilt at missing practice, for the first ever time. It was only made worse by the lie about a ‘sudden illness’ he'd text messaged the coach. He turned his phone off before he tapped Robbie on the shoulder.   
  
Robbie’s sudden start and face-cracking beam told Nick that he hadn't been as sure of Nick's coming as his cocksure attitude would suggest. Robbie didn't say anything about it, just hipchecked him hard as the bus pulled up.  
  
"No, no," said Robbie, as Nick went for his pocket. "This one's on me."  
  
+++  
  
They both got a choclatier's at O'Conail's. Robbie insisted on paying, with the excuse that he'd just got his allowance. Nick wasn't happy with it, but there was an enchanted air hanging over the crisp, slatey evening, and he didn't want to break it with an argument. It gave the whole thing the air of a date, but Nick wasn't going to mention that either.  
  
Robbie had worn jeans into school, flouting regulations but getting away with it by the strength of his charm (according to him) or the fact that he was so small teachers barely saw his head, let alone his legs (according to Nick). He had a black t-shirt on under his school shirt, which he stripped out of in the shadows of the upstairs nook of O'Conail's. Nick stared hard at the bottles of handmade boiled sweets to avoid watching the flex of Robbie's arms, the way his bracelets acted like curtains to reveal and conceal spots of skin as they slid up and down.   
  
"Here." Robbie tossed a heap of cloth at Nick. It landed on his face, smelling of dusty cinnamon. "Your pants are a bit tragic, but hopefully no one will notice."  
  
"I - thanks." Nick nearly upset his glass when he stood up to change in the bathroom. Then he nearly had a heart attack when Robbie barged in on him not five seconds later, when Nick had his nose and half an arm into the shirt.  
  
Robbie inspected his hair while Nick hurriedly struggled to clothe himself. Robbie appeared extremely concerned with one particular strand that didn't look any different from the others to Nick: he kept pulling at it as Nick smoothed down the shirt and arranged his peacoat over it.   
  
"You done there, Mr Vanity?" asked Nick, amused.  
  
"Not quite," said Robbie, and proceeded to smush both hands across Nick's head, ruffling up his hair so it fell haphazardly and far more greasily than before.   
  
"Thanks?"  
  
"You're welcome," said Robbie. "C'mon, let's finish our drinks."  
  
When they returned to their benches, a group of rowdy college students had taken the empty seats behind them. Robbie moved his stool closer to Nick's - so close their knees touched, and Nick, at least, felt a strange thrill every time the fabric rustled. Robbie leaned forward to whisper in Nick's ear just as Nick raised his glass to take a sip. The thick, hot liquid gushed down his throat the wrong way as Robbie breathed, "Will you help me put my ring in?"  
  
"Your what?" said Nick, when he could force air into his lungs again. Robbie produced a fine silver ring, which he proceeded to push through his lip with practiced ease. He touched it with his tongue, and Nick suddenly felt like a whole tub of hot chocolate had been poured on his head.   
  
"Can you just - close the clasp?" asked Robbie. He took Nick's hand and guided it to his mouth. Nick imagined he could feel Robbie's pulse through the soft round edge of his lip. His hand was shaking too much for him to exert enough force to close the two ends, so he steadied himself with his other hand on Robbie's chin. Finally, finally, the two silver points slotted together and Nick whipped his hands away, feeling the burn of stubble on his fingertips.  
  
Robbie ran his tongue along the ring. For once Nick was helpless to look away. Why, he wondered miserably, did he so want to just put his mouth where the metal bit into the flesh - not even to kiss Robbie, not even to press their lips together the way Nick had forced them to a few days ago? Why, when making out half-naked with Laura didn't work him up half so much? If he were single these feelings would have been disturbing enough, but as it stood -  
  
"Are you finished yet?"  
  
"Huh?" Robbie frowned at him. He had chocolate on his chin from stealing Nick's mini-buttons. Nick had to sit on his hands to stop himself wiping it off.  
  
"I thought you wanted to laugh at stupid skateboarders, or something?" Nick tried to modulate his tone, with evident success. Robbie's face lit up in an evil grin.  
  
"Let's go," he said.   
  
+++  
  
A function of some kind was being held at the opera house. Attendees streamed in from the quays and from Opera Lane: an incongruous mix of long satin gowns held carefully above the damp cobbles versus the determinedly disinterested attire of the skateboarders, their caps pulled low over their ears to ward off the cold.  
  
Robbie and Nick sat on the low wall outside the Crawford Gallery. The light hovered between dusk and dark, casting a filmy glow over everything. Robbie was currently absorbed in texting, bent over his phone so low Nick could see the back of his neck. Nick wondered who he was talking to, what he was saying. He wondered what the skin just above Robbie's collar felt like.   
  
"Tonight is going to be awesome," said Robbie gleefully, at last putting away his phone. "Fin might be there, he was just saying -"  
  
"Fin?" repeated Nick. His chest felt sort of hollow, like something vital had just been scooped out.  
  
"Yeah," said Robbie. "He's the one that hooked me up with tickets. Anyway, apparently there's a chance that -"  
  
"Are you and Fin, like -" after blurting this, Nick lost the will to finish the question. "- You know?"  
  
Robbie looked utterly mystified. "No, I don't know."  
  
"Are you, are you," Nick waved his hands around, then smacked his palms, hard, "together?"  
  
"Well, yeah," said Robbie. "We're in the band, remember? I know sportsmen are prone to head injuries, but I didn't realise your short term memory was this bad -"  
  
"Dating!" shouted Nick. One of the skateboarders fell off mid-trick and shot Nick a resentful glare.   
  
Robbie stuffed his fist to his mouth, just like Nick's toddler cousin when he was trying to be quiet. Robbie, however, was making no effort to conceal his laughter. "Dating!" he gasped. "Dating Fin! No, stop, I have to picture that." He spread his hands beatifically for a few seconds, before convulsing in laughter again.  
  
"What's so funny?" Nick felt irritated. "Fin's not that hideous. I had crush on him once."  
  
That had the effect of sobering Robbie up instantaneously. " _What_?"  
  
"Um." Nick had never told that fact to a living soul. Who could he tell? Padraig, Finn's _brother_? Jack, who thought that being gay meant you had to become a priest? Fin himself? "It's no big deal."  
  
Robbie stared at him with saucer eyes, which at least distracted Nick from looking at his mouth. "Did you ever - do anything?" he said in hushed tones.  
  
"No!" Realising this was a shade too vehement considering all the thoughts he'd been harbouring about Robbie, Nick amended with, "I mean, he never knew. It was a completely one-sided ... infatuation. But what are you saying, my taste is terrible?"  
  
Robbie shifted a little on the ledge, tucking his hands between his knees as if for warmth. Nick didn't miss the way the movement brought them elbow to elbow, hip to hip, knee to knee. "No," said Robbie, quietly. "I think your taste is just fine."  
  
No longer interested in what Robbie had found so funny compared to the smooth curve of Robbie's cheek, the distracting way the line was broken by tiny spikes of stubble, and how much he wanted to press his lips to it, Nick stayed silent. Robbie gave an exaggerated shiver, although the night wasn't terribly cold as November went.   
  
"Let me in," he said. Nick, distracted by his thoughts of how distracting Robbie was, gave him a confused look. Robbie curled up his hand and burrowed it between their knees, sighing happily when it was pressed tight into the relative warmth. "That's better," he said. "I have very bad circulation. Cold hands, cold feet."  
  
"Warm heart," Nick completed the old saying. Robbie didn't seem to have heard it before, for he looked puzzled, then delighted. As if by accident, his fingers curved around and under Nick's knee, pressing slowly into the tender hollow there.   
  
"Did you ever watch Ally McBeal?" asked Robbie.  
  
"What? What's that? No." Nick took a deep breath, as if that would disguise the fact that he was almost gasping.  
  
"Never mind." Robbie smiled without showing his teeth. His fingers pressed in, deep and soft.  
  
+++  
  
Nick was feeling quite wobbly yet at peace with the world when they eventually set out for Child's on Half Moon Lane, where the gig was on. They walked close together, laughing over nothing and brushing knuckles every second step. Nick was careful to make sure it looked like an accident from his end. Robbie limped a little with his left leg, but he blamed it on a cramp when Nick asked.   
  
A compact knot of people barred the door to Child's. Nick and Robbie joined the outer layer - "like penguins, trying to get to the inner circle," joked Robbie - and eventually were admitted. The disaffected doorman didn't even ask to see their IDs. Nick was relieved; he usually tried to get away with his height and (theoretically) charm, but he much preferred it when the pubs broke the law for him.   
  
"D'you want a drink?" yelled Robbie. It was early, yet the atmosphere crackled. Noisily.   
  
Nick didn't want a drink. His parents were fairly lax, but even they would notice if he came home smelling of beer on a school night. He had one brief vision of a drunken Robbie and a drunken Nick, walking home together by the river, inhibitions dissolved in ethanol - but it passed, and he shook his head.  
  
"Thank god," said Robbie, leaning in close. "I thought I'd have to act all macho and get us matching double whiskeys. Coke good for you?"   
  
"Thanks," said Nick, relieved beyond measure that Robbie didn't judge him for abstaining. He watched in admiration as Robbie, using his lack of height to advantage, squirrelled between burlier patrons to pop up right in front of the bartender.   
  
The bar was fairly traditional, with carefully aged wooden beams, tatty red velvet furnishings and enough brass horseshoes and paraphernalia to outfit the racetrack at Kildare. There were even murky, badly printed hunting scenes. Nick rolled his eyes. At the far end of the roughly square room, a small raised dais formed the stage, on which a group of techs were swiftly assembling amps and a drum kit. Nick grew so absorbed in watching them that he didn't even notice Robbie's return, at least until a cold wet glass bumped his elbow.  
  
Nick smiled and clinked glasses with him. Robbie tilted his head towards the stage, and Nick followed to take up two spare barstools at the end of the bar closest the stage. Some more enthusiastic fans were already moshing along to the canned DJ music.  
  
"Did you find out who's supporting them?" asked Nick. Robbie made a face and pointed at his ears. Nick shuffled his barstool closer to Robbie's and put his lips right up to Robbie's ear to repeat the question.  
  
Robbie turned around fully to do the same to Nick, which seemed excessive when all he had to say was, "No." But Nick wasn't complaining. He wriggled his shoulder so that it fit against Robbie's, making it especially comfortable when the crowd thickened.   
  
When there was barely breathing room left - and Robbie had slipped his fingers around Nick's waist so they took up even less space - a man jangling with all the piercings hanging from him mounted the stage. He tapped the microphone to a scream of feedback and smiled. Nick watched in horrified fascination, sure one of his piercings would split his skin open if he used too excessive a facial expression.  
  
"Ladies and gents," he said in a C4 accent, "are you ready to hear one of the greatest musical sensations of the twenty-first century?"  
  
There was a disconcerted chorus of 'yeahs' and 'bring it on's. Nick grinned to hear Robbie's 'Pray do' vibrate through his spine.  
  
"Well, that's too bad," said the announcer, "because first, you're gonna hear one of the greatest musical sensations of the twentieth century. You all are a bit young, but if you know music you should have heard of these guys. Here's Polo Byrne and Danny Head of the Shamrockers!"  
  
"Oh my god!" Robbie pulled Nick's head around so he could catch Robbie's hysteria full on. "Oh my god, oh my god. _This_ is the secret act! It's amazing!"  
  
"Who are they?" said Nick blankly.  
  
"Who - jesus, Nick, they're only the biggest Irish band since U2! They broke up years ago, but Polo Byrne is one of the biggest producers in LA. Or is it New York? Wow, I wonder if they're reuniting?"  
  
"Like Take That," said Nick, and got a dig in the side for his irreverence.  
  
"Shh," said Robbie, unnecessarily. The audience was plunged into darkness and silence as all the lights bar one naked white circle on the stage were extinguished. Two men appeared through the backing curtain, their faces in shadow. The first thing Nick recognised was the galaxy of rings under knuckles ringed with stars, clasped tight around the neck of the lead guitar.   
  
The second thing Nick recognised was his dad.

+++

Mr Hedges - or Head - was actually extremely good at playing the guitar. He wasn't a half-bad singer either, though he mainly performed growly back up to Polo Byrne's sob-torn lyrics. If it weren't for the sensible lace-up brogues Nick mightn't have even been sure that it _was_ his dad, but Mr Hedges was the only man in the world fashion-blind enough to buy shoes that ugly. Or so Nick had thought; the grungy t-shirt and distressed jeans Mr Hedges was currently wearing wouldn't have looked out of place on anyone in Nick's class, or even Nick himself.   
  
A million thoughts crowded Nick's head, but all he could concentrate on was the fact that Mr Hedges must have gone clothes-shopping - Mr Hedges, who had his suits ordered bespoke and bought slippers online because he hated high street shops.   
  
Nick had been aware for some time that part of growing up meant relinquishing the idea that parents were all knowing, all powerful gods. For example, when his mother snapped at him, it might only mean that she'd had a long day dealing with buyers at the gallery, and not that Nick was a demon child lost to all hope of discipline and respect, as her attitude suggested. It had only dawned on him recently that the reason his father was so boring and spent so long in the office might be an unhappy marriage. This, though - that his father was a performer, a man who sang lyrics that Robbie and a hundred others mouthed along to; that he played music Nick found faintly familiar, from a Jungian consciousness of eighties hits - was entirely out of the ballpark. Nick couldn't process the information correctly. All he could do was gape at his father and wonder how he could stretch his fingers so far over the frets.   
  
When at last his father finished the set, he and Polo Byrne left the stage to a cacophony of cheers. It soon became evident that, despite the fervent admonitions of the crowd, they had no intention of returning for an encore. The emcee took to the stage to warm them up for Fred. Nick groped under the bar and found Robbie's fingers. At his squeeze, Robbie turned from where he'd been excitedly discussing the set with a man three times his age.  
  
"I have to - outside," said Nick. He must have looked pretty awful, for Robbie's face tightened and he guided Nick to the door. Nick hadn't wanted Robbie to come, to ruin his night too, but he was selfishly glad he did.   
  
As soon as they were clear of the press of people, Nick found a wall to lean against and pressed his icy hands over his eyes. Robbie said his name in a high C.  
  
"I'm fine, I'm fine, it's just -" Nick took away his palms to breathe and spotted Polo Byrne leaving through a back door, guitar case in hand. He was laughing over his shoulder at someone. At Nick's dad.  
  
"Oh my god," breathed Robbie, "there he is! One of the most powerful people in the music business, and he's right here -"  
  
"With my dad," said Nick flatly.  
  
"With your - what?" Robbie peered around the otherwise deserted lane, evidently expecting a civil servant to materialise out of thin air.   
  
Nick ran out of words. He pointed, as Mr Hedges emerged from the same door, wearing a huge smile that was even more unlikely than his clothes.   
  
"No, Nick," laughed Robbie, "that's Danny Head, not ..." his voice trailed off as he looked from Nick to Mr Hedges, evidently tracing the common ancestry in their large mouths and ashy blonde hair. "Oh my _god_. You mean - you didn't know?"  
  
Nick shook his head. He stared fixedly at his father. Some sixth sense alerted him to it, because he looked up. His face, when he spotted his son, must have borne a comic resemblance to Nick's own; Robbie took one look and swallowed down giggles.   
  
"Nicholas Hedges!" His father's voice scraped - probably because he'd been singing it raw, Nick thought unsympathetically. "What are you doing here?"  
  
"I could ask you the same thing - Danny Head," said Nick.  
  
His father was shaken by the sally, but not beaten. "It's after twelve on a school night," he said. "I don't remember you asking permission to come out, and I certainly don't remember me granting it."  
  
"Dad," said Nick. Polo Byrne padded up behind Mr Hedges and put a hand on his shoulder. Mr Hedges glanced sideways for a moment before returning his attention, in all its severe glory, to Nick - but that moment was enough. Nick felt sick. He wished he'd shut the door on Polo that first day and pretended that there was no such person as Mr Hedges.  
  
"Go home, Nick," sighed his father. All the fight was gone from him, as if Polo had sapped it away with a touch. "I'll deal with you tomorrow." Without even waiting to hear Nick's reply, he walked off with Polo into the night.   
  
"Nick?" Robbie's thumb brushed a line down the side of his hand. "C'mon, I'll take you home."  
  
+++  
  
Nick climbed into bed fully clothed and woke up there twelve hours later, having forgotten to turn on his phone and hence silencing the alarm clock. It wasn't hard to convince Marita that he was extremely unwell.  
  
After tucking him up with Knorr Cup-A-Soup and soda bread, Marita instantly forgot about him in favour of hoovering and Home and Away. Nick poured the soup down the sink, broke out his stash of Fruit and Nut, and munched away moodily while curled up in the window seat. His phone buzzed several times. There were six messages from Laura, some from the night before wondering where he was, some from today wondering where he was. Jack texted about a homework assignment, probably without having noticed Nick was missing. Padraig just sent a grammatically criminal 'were u :('. From Robbie, there was nothing at all.  
  
By four o'clock Nick was well and truly bored. Too restless for video games or TV, not hungry enough to eat, Nick threw on a jumper the washing machine had stretched to Dr Gadget proportions over the pyjamas Marita had forced him into and crept outside. The wind frazzled the grease in his hair, shot in through the huge loopy holes in his jumper and flayed the thin material of his pants, but he marched on regardless. He wasn't even sure where he was going until he washed up on Robbie's doorstep.  
  
Frances opened the door with a beaming smile. "You've beat him here," she said. "He's not home yet. But come and have some scones with us in the front room."  
  
Even in his normal state of mind, Nick was too polite to refuse this velvet-coated command. Muffled as his thoughts were now, he just gave her a vacant smile and followed, the untied laces on his Timberlands flapping.  
  
The scones were nice, dripping with butter, jam and artery-cloggers. The mysterious gym was shut off, reminding Nick that he still couldn't figure out what the supersized treadmill was for. Instead he was treated to an array of all things floral. 'Matching' and 'harmony' were two words that didn't feature in Frances's interior design category; Nick felt quite cowed by the excess of carnations.   
  
Robbie's father, a bald and white-bearded gentleman who bore a passing resemblance to Mahatma Gandhi, seated himself opposite Nick and treated him to a long and serious monologue on the benefits of acupuncture. Mr Kincaid was a lawyer, but had hurt his back playing golf. Modern medicine - a term that Mr Kincaid puffed out as one would a ball of noxious gas - had nothing to offer him and, in addition, had the temerity to suggest that there was nothing at all the matter with him. So he'd turned to the East, acupuncture to be precise, and undergone a cure that was nothing less than miraculous. Mr Kincaid was taking a night-time course in acupuncture with a view to becoming a certified practitioner. In a zombie-doze, Nick found himself agreeing to be needled so that Mr Kincaid could practice.  
  
"No time like the present!" said Mr Kincaid. He produced a pack of needles from a pocket that surely could not have held them and encouraged Nick to take off his jumper. All he was wearing beneath it was a vest that had gone through several life cycles, from purest white to its current state of mealy grey. Feeling embarrassed was the last thing on Nick's mind; he just leaned forward so Mr Kincaid could take great handfuls of his trapezius muscles and skewer them. Nick bit back a string of hisses and hoped Mr Kincaid was only beginning his training, otherwise acupuncture was nothing more than dressed-up torture.  
  
The front door banging alerted Nick to Robbie's arrival. He looked up, hoping to spot him in the hallway, but Mr Kincaid said sharply, "Keep your head down, sir, if you please." By the time Nick found the right words to say, Robbie had already flown past the front room door and up the stairs. It was another quarter of an hour before he came back down. Voices rose in the kitchen and a minute later, Robbie stormed into the front room.  
  
"Dad!" he yelled. "What have I told you about doing that mumbo-jumbo bullshit on people!"  
  
"Robert, language, please," said Mr Kincaid. He plucked the last needle from Nick's juddering muscles. "I was just finished."  
  
Robbie rolled his eyes and made an incoherent noise. He grabbed Nick's upper arm, all uncaring that it had just recently been used as a pincushion, and pulled him to safety. Frances hovered in the kitchen doorway. Robbie made a face at her, grabbed the plate of brownies she proffered, and beckoned Nick upstairs.   
  
"Jesus christ," he muttered, pulling his bedcover straight and pushing Nick down on it. "He's fucking - ever since - I don't believe a word of it, do you?"  
  
Nick stopped examining his shoulders for bleeding. "Well, what he was saying about his back -"  
  
"His back, his back," said Robbie bitterly. "As if that's the only injury to ever happen to anyone ever. As if acupuncture could cure anything _real_!"  
  
Nick looked up into Robbie's flushed, heated face, the glint of metal in his lip. Had he worn that to school, even with the threat of Mrs DuPolo Byrne before his eyes? Nick remembered spreading his fingertips over Robbie's lips so he could close the clasp. Robbie paced, his perambulations knocking him against Nick's feet. Nick reached out to still him, two fingers on his jumping pulse.  
  
"I think I'm breaking up with Laura," he said.   
  
That had the effect of both shutting up and stopping Robbie. He halted right over Nick, big eyes boring into Nick's.   
  
"What's that about, then?" he asked quietly. Nick shrugged.   
  
"I just - I want." Nick swallowed painfully. "My dad, you know, he told me things and I thought he meant them, but now he's got this life that I never even knew about. So I don't know what anything means anymore, only that I - I keep wanting to - touch you."  
  
"Shut up," said Robbie. "Don't -" He tried to pull his hand out of Nick's grasp, but Nick held on.  
  
"I keep thinking you want to, too - I don't know if it even matters -"  
  
"I should think it does," said Robbie hotly.   
  
"I mean to me," said Nick, "to what we – I – I _feel_." He released Robbie's hand with a sigh and dropped his head to his knees.   
  
For a few seconds all he could hear was his own breathing, amplified sea-shell-like by his posture. Then he felt a light pressure as Robbie ran his fingers through Nick's hair.  
  
"I wouldn't do that," mumbled Nick. "'s all greasy."  
  
"Yes." Robbie gave it a tug. "That it is." A harder tug, and Nick raised his head with an injured wince.  
  
"You didn't have to -" he began. Robbie pretty effectively cancelled his protests by planting his mouth over Nick's. His hand was still fisted too tight in Nick's hair, Nick's head bent back at an awkward angle, and there was nothing gentle or affectionate in Robbie's mouth - just hard pressure and not a little anger. Nick opened his knees so Robbie could push between them and tilted his neck even more. Robbie's lips slanted across his upper lip, overshooting slightly. Nick could feel his wet breath under his nose before Robbie closed both his lips around Nick's upper one and tipped him back on the bed.   
  
"You want to touch?" breathed Robbie. "You really want to touch?" He slid his hand around the inside of Nick's thigh and roughly shoved it out. His body settled heavily over Nick's, which felt burning hot under his thin layer of clothes. Nick's only answer was to groan, and to reach up to pull Robbie's mouth on to his again.  
  
Robbie rolled forward on to his elbows and rocked his whole body down against Nick. Nick's hips jerked up in response. Robbie caught his moan before it left his mouth, kissing him wetly and open-mouthed until Nick got impatient and slipped him the tongue. Robbie's response was to savagely bunch up Nick's shirt and kiss a line from his collarbone to his nipple. Once there he sucked on it lightly. Nick's hips twitched up restlessly. Robbie's breathing grew louder as he impatiently tugged at Nick's shirt.   
  
"Off, off," he panted. "Dear god, what are you wearing?"  
  
Nick kicked off his loose Timberlands. "Not much?" he suggested. Robbie's smile grew wicked.  
  
He smoothed his hand up Nick's side and returned to torturing his nipple, lapping at it until it grew tight and peaked. Nick groaned and scratched his fingers down Robbie's spine, eliciting another undulating roll that brought their hips flush together. Nick could feel everything through the thin material of his pyjama pants, down to the rasp of the weave of Robbie's jeans, and it felt insanely, heart-sickeningly good.  
  
"How're you doing down there?" asked Robbie, flexing his hips again. Nick arched - everywhere, baring his throat, curving his chest, winding his legs around Robbie's. He'd never felt so abandoned, so lost in sensation. His cock throbbed, reminding him that Robbie should either be kissing him or feeling him up or preferably both.  
  
"God, Robbie -" he choked out.  
  
"Robbie?" said another voice, one that was distinctly less welcome. Nick froze, but Frances was calling from downstairs and not, as he feared, from outside the door.   
  
"What?" replied Robbie grouchily. He squeezed the flesh under Nick's ribs as if to convey his irritation, but Nick’s every nerve just tightened with pleasure at the touch.  
  
"Your friend's mother is on the phone," said Frances. "He needs to go home right away."  
  
+++  
  
Marita's balm in times of stress was tea. In response to the seriousness of the situation, there were no less than fifteen cups sitting on the kitchen table when Nick arrived, some half-drunk, most not even touched. Marita sat sobbing over a sixteenth cup, the tea reposing in a cheerful field of kittens. At the other end of the table, his mother traced patterns in spilt crumbs of sugar. Neither of them looked up when the door banged shut.  
  
"What happened?" he asked.   
  
Marita's only response was to sob even louder. Nick's mother looked up. Her face was bare of makeup, virtually unrecognisable. Nate wondered uncomfortably if she'd always had those pouches under her eyes, if the skin of her neck had always been that loose. Although her eyes were pink-edged, she wasn't crying. Indeed, when she spoke, her voice was calm, almost bored, the tone she used on telemarketers and distant friends.  
  
"He's left me," she said, and returned to drawing abstract swirls on the table.  
  
"Who?" Nick had an inkling, but he wanted it confirmed. His mother's finger moved faster, but she didn't reply. Instead, Marita got up and, still snorting out tears, fetched an envelope sitting on the counter. It was addressed to Sylvia and the flap hadn't been gummed down.  
  
His inkling rapidly sprouting into a fully-grown dread, Nick pulled out the folded over sheet of notepaper tucked into the envelope. His father hadn't even bothered to neaten the serrated edges. His writing wandered sideways across the lined page, as if he'd been scribbling with more haste than care.  
  
 _Dear S,  
  
You know things haven't been right for a long time - maybe ever. I'm sure you regret the decision we made all those years ago as much as I do. But Nick's old enough now to stop the charade. B's made me an offer I can't refuse - I'd be mad to refuse it - all I can hope is that you'll forgive me and we can be friends again one day. I'll forward on contact details etc once I know what they are. Don't worry about money.  
  
Regards,  
D_  
  
It was the 'regards' that really got to Nick. In every respect bar content, his father had written the letter as if it was business correspondence: precise and totally impersonal. Nick didn't understand the particulars of what he'd said, but the gist of it was clear. His father was abandoning them.  
  
A thought struck him. "Did he leave a letter for me?" he asked. Marita was too convulsed with emotion to answer him. Eventually, his mother met his eyes. In the last five minutes, she seemed to have turned into an old woman. She gave a gusty sigh.  
  
"I’m sorry," she said heavily.  
  
Nick dropped the letter, accidentally-on-purpose grinding it under his foot as he left the kitchen. He pulled his duvet over to the window seat and mummified himself in it. His eyes were clear, but there was a burning behind them that suggested tears might be imminent. To stave them off, Nick got his phone from his pocket and frenetically rubbed his thumb over the keypad.  
  
Who to call? Padraig and Jack would be worse than useless in such a situation. There was Robbie, of course ... but Nick felt strangely reluctant to tell him all of this. Maybe he didn't want to mar the shining memory of what had just happened between them with the mud of his father's cowardly actions. Or maybe he just didn't feel comfortable telling Robbie something like this.   
  
All at once, he realised the person he really wanted to talk to was Laura. He'd pressed down on the speed-dial before he quite knew what he was doing.  
  
"Hey, Laura," he said, in a subdued tone. "No, not really. Something bad's happened. Listen - do you think you could come over?" As soon as she said yes, he felt like the world's biggest jerk.  
  
+++  
  
Laura arrived by the front door, as per Nick's instructions. He guided her quickly upstairs. Usually Laura was happy to spend a few minutes in conversation with whichever adult happened to be in the house, whether it was one of his parents or Marita. However, Nick seriously doubted there were in fact any adults in his house at the moment. Besides, he didn't want Laura finding out the news in the same way he had.  
  
Laura was dressed sensibly in Ugg boots, a puffy jacket and a pink scarf and hat. It reminded Nick of how he'd rushed out into the cold in his pyjamas to get to Robbie's house. There was something about the difference, and the way Laura chattered about inconsequentialities like the new hall carpet, that made Nick feel like he couldn't breathe. All the same, he managed to get upstairs before either Marita or his mother caught them.  
  
Laura sat next to him on the bed and pulled off her hat. "Babe, you look terrible. Are you ill?" Her hand, when she laid it on Nick's, was cold.  
  
Nick shook his head. "Not me. It's not me. It's my parents. My dad, he -" Nick's lips opened around the word, but his tongue refused to push it out. He looked helplessly at Laura.  
  
"He's ill?" guessed Laura. "Oh, then - are they splitting up?"  
  
"Yes," said Nick. He wondered why he was blushing, but when Laura's hand on his face came away wet, he realised the sudden heat was from tears.   
  
"Oh honey," said Laura. She wrapped her hands around his arm and laid her head on his shoulder. "I'm so, so sorry. Have they been fighting?"  
  
"They never fight," said Nick. "They're barely ever in the same room together."  
  
"Ah." Laura's hands tightened. "So, has he moved out or - what?"  
  
"He left a note." Nick shifted restlessly, sliding his arm gently out of Laura's grip and standing up. The room was cold. Marita probably hadn't switched the heating on. "I don't know where he's gone ... have you ever heard of a band called the Shamrockers?"  
  
Laura looked astonished by this non sequiter, but she said after a minute, "Yeah, I think my dad has their greatest hits. And that one song everyone knows, Dance Baby or something -"  
  
"My dad was in it," said Nick.   
  
"In what?"  
  
"In the Shamrockers. He was - is - their rhythm guitarist." Nick walked over to his duvet and began mindlessly shuffling it.   
  
"Wow," said Laura. "That's - it's hard to picture him. They were very glam rock, you know, on the cover of the album they're all wearing makeup and glitter."  
  
Nick thought of the time he'd worn Finbarr's eyeliner and felt his chest constrict. "It feels like I don't know him at all. Like he's some stranger who was just posing as my dad all these years."  
  
"I'm sure it's not like that," said Laura. "Just because he and your mam aren't in love any more, it doesn't mean he doesn't love _you._ And they loved each other enough to have you, so that's something."  
  
"But not enough," said Nick bitterly.   
  
There was a glum silence after that. Nick could hear the ticking of the grandfather clock in the hall. Nick's dad had said it was a family heirloom, but maybe that wasn't true. Maybe he'd bought it cheap at an auction of a bankrupt family. Maybe he'd stolen it. If you could hide something as big as a career as a famous musician, what else might you be capable of hiding?  
  
Maybe he wasn't even Nick's real dad.  
  
Maybe that was why he'd left.  
  
"There's something else I have to tell you," said Nick, his voice spluttering like a rusty rifle. "I - I want us to break up."  
  
He forced himself to look at Laura as he said it. He, at least, would act like a man in this situation.  
  
Laura's mouth dropped open; her eyes filmed over, but she dashed at them angrily. "But - why? Don't you love me anymore?"  
  
"I think I'll always love you," said Nick quietly. "I don't think that's something that can be undone. But it's just ... not all there is."  
  
Laura was crying in earnest now, but still slapping her cheeks to stem the flow. "There's someone else, isn't there? How else could you say you still love me and do this to me? There's someone else!"  
  
Nick thought of Robbie. He couldn't really be described as 'someone else'. He was everything else.  
  
Laura's nose turned bright red when she cried, and this time was no exception. Nick felt a strong urge to sit on the bed and hug her till she felt better, but he was fairly sure such a move would not be welcomed - or worse, misconstrued.  
  
He didn't answer Laura's accusation, which caused her to weep harder. Nick steeled himself, not moving as Laura’s grief reached a crescendo and calmed again. She mopped her face with the end of her scarf.  
  
"I suppose I'll just - go," she said dully.   
  
Nick caught her hand. He struggled for a moment, while hope bloomed on Laura's face. "I am sorry," he said at last.  
  
Laura's hand grew limp and dropped away. "But not enough," she said. Nick listened to her footsteps as she slowly descended the stairs. They paused for a while before he heard the front door open and close. Only then did Nick allow himself to breathe.  
  
+++  
  
Immediately after Laura left, Nick felt fine. His relief at doing the right thing - and it was obvious that it was the right thing, because it was also the hardest and most painful - was overwhelming. He even started to get hungry, and regret throwing away his soup. It was a weirdly normal sensation.  
  
It wasn't until he reached up for the packet of Kimberly Mikados that the gut-tearing guilt hit him - from behind, like a cheat. For a moment Nick thought it was literally smacking him around the head. It took him several seconds longer than it should have to realise that biscuits were falling from the precariously tilted packet above. He pushed it safely back on to the shelf and knelt down, mechanically picking up the crushed and twisted remains of the fallen. They filled both his hands, sticky pink crumbs scraping through the gaps in his fingers. For the life of him, he couldn't think what to do with them next. Laura's voice reveberated in his head, reciting every sentence of their last exchange, but stressing some words unexpectedly. Every time he thought she'd finished, she started again from a different point, shrieking 'ands' and 'buts' and 'enoughs'.  
  
Nick carefully tucked his handfuls of broken biscuit into a gap between two jars of spaghetti sauce. His bare feet crunched over the floor as he drifted out of the pantry. His elbow swept a cup of tea from the counter, knocking a lukewarm gush over his toes. He should do something about that, too, but he couldn't quite remember what. All his thoughts were in Laura's voice, so he didn't want to think them.   
  
He padded a trail of pale brown footprints into the cream twill carpet across the hall and up the stairs. A peculiar wailing came from the direction of his mother's studio. She always listened to the Bee Gees when she was working.  
  
A shot of surprise bounced through the curtain of guilt suffocating Nick. His mother needed to be absolutely calm when she worked, and would often use methods of coercion, bribery and minor domestic violence to achieve this. In the midst of a creative fit she wouldn't allow any TV or radio to be turned on in the house, in case she heard something to upset her. In her current state of mind, Nick thought painting should be last thing she was capable of.  
  
A cannonball of surprise awaited Nick when he opened the door of his mother's studio. It was a mess of contradictions, as well as just plain messy. His mother usually kept her studio in a state of surgical cleanliness, as if she expected a hygeine audit at any minute. She painted at arm's length from her canvases, wearing a pristine smock - any one of half a dozen she had specially made for her by a designer friend. She even wore full makeup to paint. "It's a job, just like any other," she always insisted.  
  
But not today. Dressed in ratty sweatpants, which Nick thought might actually be his own, and with a dying cigarette clenched in her teeth, Mrs Hedges was getting up close and personal with a small canvas. Her usual pieces were a minimum of four feet by five - designed to be ignored in corporate hallways or intimidating in drafty galleries.   
  
"I thought you gave up smoking," said Nick.  
  
"I lied," said Mrs Hedges. She didn't turn around, or even startle, at the unexpected intrusion. In normal times, Nick practically had to make an appointment to visit her here.   
  
Nick stepped closer, peering around her shoulder. There were huge splodges of paint all over the floor, as he discovered when he stepped in one. Half a dozen canvases were carelessly tossed behind Mrs Hedges' easel. Some of them were still wet and smudged from rough handling. Each one of them was of a man's face, and all of them were massively raw and angry. As Nick watched, his mother swiped her brush through a wine glass full of red paint and half-threw it at the canvas. It landed awkwardly across the portrait's mouth. Mrs Hedges ground her paintbrush in, destroying any semblance of facial features in a storm of haemoglobin.  
  
"So," said Nick, "you're not mad at Dad at all, huh."  
  
"No, I'm not," said Mrs Hedges, completely sincere - which was pretty much the Hiroshima of surprises. "That bastard Polo, on the other hand..." Her voice trailed off as she pushed the paintbrush against the canvas so hard the handle broke. "Shit!" She tossed it on to a pile of similarly abused artistic implements, including a palette knife bent practically at right angles. "He wanted Danny to abandon me when I got pregnant, you know. Said I'd trapped him. Got pregnant on purpose." She didn't seem to realise she was crying as she rummaged through her brush box for a fresh one. "Danny was the one who wanted kids. Polo never believed him when he said he was happy about it. Oh, I know they both think I'm a Yoko, but it was Polo who forced him to leave the band, not me."  
  
Such a deluge of conversation from Mrs Hedges was quite extraordinary. She usually excelled at deflecting personal questions - that, or extensively discussing such riveting topics as her new curtains. Nick could clearly remember every time she'd talked about her early life with Nick's dad, because it happened so seldom. Nick knew that her parents hadn't approved of the marriage, but they'd come around by the time Nick was old enough to remember anything. Nick always found it hard to believe that anyone could disapprove of his boring and strait-laced father. It was slightly easier to believe, now.  
  
"I knew," continued Mrs Hedges, slightly calmer. There was still manic edge to the way she twirled a paintbrush loaded with black, though. "I just had this _feeling_ , when someone mentioned Polo at a party. They'd have no reason to mention him except that he's coming back and wanting to take my husband with him. I suppose it makes sense: Danny was the only thing in the world he cared about besides himself."  
  
"He sounds like a real charmer," said Nick. This time Mrs Hedges did jump, and Nick knew she'd forgotten he was even there.  
  
"Yes," she agreed bitterly. "Even when he'd taken enough drugs to stock a pharmacy he had that twinkle in his eye. Sometimes I think Danny - but. It's not like I couldn't see it." She advanced on Nick, who was afraid she might treat him as a living canvas. "It's not like I couldn't see how the world for Danny was just a background to Polo. But I thought he _loved_ me."   
  
"He did - he does," said Nick. "I mean, if he stayed with you - he must have wanted to."  
  
"Yes," said Mrs Hedges. "But you'll find that when you get the things you want, they just become the things you have."  
  
Nick hesitated, then reached for his mother. She resisted the embrace at first, but Nick persisted.   
  
"My face is wet," she remarked, muffled by his shoulder.  
  
"I broke up with Laura," he said in reply.  
  
"What? Why?" Mrs Hedges jerked back. She gripped him by the shoulders and stared into his eyes. "Oh god, you're just like him."  
  
"What do you mean?" Nick wasn't sure if that was supposed to be an insult or not. After all, children usually at least resembled their fathers.  
  
Mrs Hedges just shook her head and returned to her painting. She washed it all over in watery grey paint as Nick watched, turning it into a rain-clouded sky.  
  
+++  
  
"Where's Laura?" was the first thing Jack asked when he thumped down his lunch tray.  
  
"Not here," said Nick in irritation, wondering why the phrase sounded so familiar. With a warm tingle, he realised he sounded like Robbie.   
  
"Well, is she coming?" Jack persisted. Before Nick could answer, Padraig strolled up.  
  
"No girl's gonna come when you're around," he said, and brayed a laugh. This rolled off Jack like water off a plastic duck, but Nick thought he saw a flash of irritation in Jack's eyes. If so, it would be the first time; Jack was famously easy to tease, because most of it went over his head. At least, that was what they all assumed.  
  
"It's not like her, that's all," muttered Jack. Padraig, clanging his cutlery, didn't hear.  
  
"Laura isn't having lunch with us today," said Nick. Jack opened his mouth, so Nick hurried on. "Or ever again. We broke up last night."  
  
Padraig dropped his fork. Jack's mouth flattened into a straight line.   
  
"Did she do the dirty on you?" demanded Padraig. "That bitch."  
  
"Laura isn't a bitch," said Jack. "She's a nice girl. Right, Nick?"  
  
"Yes," said Nick, a little surprised at Jack's initiative. "She would never do something like that." Not like me, he thought. He wondered when he had become a person who could think that.  
  
Padraig looked bewildered. It was clear that he couldn't comprehend there being another reason to forgo regular sex. "So what happened?"  
  
"Nothing," lied Nick. "It just wasn't working."  
  
"Don't give me that shit," said Padraig. "You're not on Oprah. Was she not putting out? Are _you_ doing the dirty?"  
  
That struck a little too close to home, although Nick was pretty sure Padraig didn't notice Nick's flinch. "I don't really want to talk about it," he said firmly. "And don't go around saying anything bad about her, either. I broke up with her, so she's probably more upset than me."  
  
"Huh," said Jack.  
  
They ate lunch in uneasy silence after that. Nick slipped out his phone under the table. _come to practise this evening?_ he texted Robbie. A few seconds later the reply came through. _i just might. hot sweaty men :P_. Nick grinned, but quickly deleted the message. He glanced around surreptitiously, trying to spot where Robbie was sitting. To his surprise it was with a group of Laura's friends. When he caught Nick looking, Robbie passed a hand through his hair. To anyone else it looked casual, but Nick interpreted it as a greeting.   
  
When he returned his gaze to his plate, Jack was watching him strangely. "What?" asked Nick.  
  
"Nothing," said Jack. "Are you eating the rest of that sausage?"  
  
+++  
  
"Nice to see you back, Mr Hedges," said the coach sardonically. "I take it your mystery illness cleared up?"  
  
"Yes," said Nick, cowed. His coach scared him; she had bigger muscles than most of the guys on the team. Plus, she'd called him Mr Hedges - was that even his name? Was it supposed to be Nick Head? Amongst the sea of antipathy Nick felt toward his father bobbed a tiny buoy of gratitude. His life would have been far different had it contained the mocking potential of Head as a last name.  
  
"Well, what are you waiting for? Start warming up!"  
  
The soothing repetition of running, matching his steps to the ball, driving his whole body up to shoot, relaxed Nick even as his heart raced and his legs burned. The hall filled with the squeak of shoes on the court surface, interspersed with thuds and grunts of effort.   
  
The coach separated Nick and the reserve point guard and had them practise three-pointers. As Nick shook his wet hair out of his eyes and took a long slug from his water bottle, he noticed a figure sitting on the bleachers. The gravity-defying hairstyle revealed Robbie's identity. Nick grinned like a loon and failed to notice his teammate tagging him. He still managed to pluck the ball from the air at two seconds' notice; he felt even better about it because Robbie was watching.  
  
Showing off added an extra edge to his performance. Laura had once told him he looked 'totally hot' on the court, and while memories of her were the last thing he wanted on his mind, he couldn't help hoping that Robbie might share her sentiments. Even the coach was moved to remark that he had certainly made up for missing the last practice by his efforts.  
  
"But mind you don't burn yourself out," was her doom-laden warning. Nick didn't take much notice; the coach disliked praise on principle, and would never say a good thing when she could fit in a bad thing too.  
  
Nick dallied behind the others when practise finished, playing with his shoelaces and the lid of his water bottle. At last, he was left alone on the court. He took the stairs on the bleachers two at a time. Robbie turned his face up to greet him and Nick couldn't resist the urge to pull him up by the chin and kiss him. For one heady minute, Robbie let him. But he made a noise of dissent and broke away.  
  
"What?" Nick looked around. "There's no one here." Belatedly, he realised his odour of sweat and ball plastic mightn't be the most attractive, and he blushed.  
  
Robbie said nothing. He was staring at Nick with a peculiar expression on his face. It reminded Nick of Christmas advertisements of rosy-cheeked children peering wistfully through toyshop windows.   
  
"I have something to tell you," Nick burst out. "I broke up with Laura."  
  
"Oh." If anything, Robbie's face fell at this revelation. Nick was hurt.  
  
"I thought you'd be - pleased," he said. "I mean, you were mad before because I was messing her around."  
  
"I'm not pleased," said Robbie. Before Nick could choose between horror and anger, Robbie continued, "I'm amazed."  
  
Nick beamed. He leaned forward to kiss Robbie softly on the lips. Robbie sighed into it, opening his mouth and sliding his hands around Nick's hips where his t-shirt clung to his damp skin. He can't be too bothered about the sweat, thought Nick giddily.   
  
This time it was Nick who broke the kiss. "Will you come to the party now?" he asked. He wasn't sure he wanted to go around introducing Robbie as his boyfriend just yet - it was disrespectful to Laura, for one thing. But he wanted Robbie there, for the cake and presents and dancing, and for after, alone in the dark. He wanted Robbie around pretty much all the time, and his skin was still fizzling with delight that Robbie had shown up to watch his practise.   
  
"Nick." Robbie's hands fell away from Nick's sides. "We can't. I can't do this."  
  
"What do you mean? It's only a party. You don't have to come, of course, but -"  
  
Robbie shook his head so violently his hair lost some of its stiffness and whirled around his face. "Not the party. All of it. I can't be with you."  
  
"I don't understand."   
  
"There's nothing to understand," said Robbie. "It was only a few kisses, it's not like we're soulmates or something."  
  
"Yes. We are," said Nick. He sat down abruptly. "You said so."  
  
Robbie curled his mouth derisively. "Look, Nick, it's not you. I just - I can't explain it to you. Besides, do you really want to deal with the repercussions of having a girlfriend with a dick?"  
  
"No," said Nick. "But I might be able to handle having a boyfriend." He looked away from Robbie's face. He might have courage, but he didn't have that much. "It's not the middle ages. Besides, I never realised you cared about all that."  
  
"I don't. You do."  
  
"Don't put this all on me!" Nick jumped up. "You prance around thinking you're all unique and different, but when push comes to shove you're just like everyone else. I'm not ashamed to say I like you, but I'm fucking not going to be with someone who is!" He took a flying leap that brought him four steps down from Robbie, jarring his knee painfully.   
  
"Nick!" Robbie cried out, sounding genuinely alarmed. Nick shook out his knee and ran down the rest of the steps.  
  
This was officially the worst week of his life.  
  
+++  
  
Nick's party was the only topic of conversation on Friday. It even beat out the X Factor. The thought of it oppressed him. His mother was out of commission, Marita was still sobbing into the washing up, they didn't have a tea-free cup in the house and worst of all, worst of anything, he'd lost Robbie. The last thing Nick wanted to do was celebrate his own life. Unfortunately, it was far too late to cancel. Supplies had started being delivered on Thursday evening and more were coming when he left for school on Friday. He'd probably end up doing most of the preparation himself. He thought he'd rather visit the dentist for four hours straight.  
  
He was surprised when he arrived home to find the house in a bustle. White-hatted caterers buzzed around, turning the vast sitting room into a fairyland of multicoloured lights, spiky candles and masses of spider-lilies. Another horde of helpers heaved trestle tables into the dining room and spread them with white cloths, tureens of black and green grapes and silver ivy garlands. And that was only the decoration. The food itself was ferried from the kitchen to the dining room with impressive speed.   
  
In the midst of it all his mother, already dressed in trailing drapes of navy velvet, brandished a clipboard and a glass of champagne. She broke off yelling at a recaltricant waiter when she spotted Nick.  
  
"Hello darling." She left two stripes of war paint on each of his cheeks. "It's all systems go here. Why don't you head on upstairs and get ready? I've laid out your suit and Marita's cleaned your bathroom at long last."  
  
"You look ... better," ventured Nick. His mother graced him with a brittle smile.  
  
"Better than what, darling?" was her unanswerable question.   
  
Nick slowly climbed the stairs. Although he was the cause of this whirlwind of activity, he felt he was at the calm, empty eye of the storm.   
  
Marita had done more than clean the bathroom: she'd run a bath and filled it with rose-scented bubbles and enough bath salts to make lying it in feel like rolling in gravel. All the same, Nick lay there until the bubbles dispersed and his fingers creased up. As the water lapped at his throat, he suddenly thought of Robbie's mouth. It made him inexpressibly sad to think he'd never get to kiss Robbie again. He hadn't got anywhere near his fill of touching Robbie. His hand drifted down his bare stomach, but he didn't have the heart to go any further. Between his father, Laura and Robbie, his heart hadn't exactly broken, but it had got so knocked about that it was cowering from any further injury. And the water was cold.  
  
His toiletries - hair gel, face wash and shaving set - had been helpfully set out in the order of their use. Nick smiled, although the expression didn't translate to his face. Marita had given him an ugly card and a voucher for HMV, but her real gift was in trying to make his party preparations relaxing.   
  
There was an unfamiliar box sitting on the windowsill. Nick frowned when he opened it and saw an array of Dior cosmetics. His mother had numerous makeup kits, all anally retentively stored by designer brand. Marita must have left this one here by mistake.  
  
Instead of closing the lid, Nick dragged his hand over the neatly stacked pots and boxes. His fingers rolled over a set of pencils. An idea occurred to him.  
  
"Are you nearly ready, dear?" called Marita through the door. Nick remembered distantly that before the business with his father, Marita had been very excited about the party, and had dragged her boyfriend around the shops for seven consecutive weekends in order to find the perfect dress. "Your mother wants you to taste the hors d'oeuvres."  
  
Nick closed his hand around a rich black khol. "Yeah, Marita," he replied, "I'll be out in a minute."  
  
+++  
  
The two reception rooms were already milling with guests when Nick eventually came down, a little shaky but determined. Most of the people there were his mother's guests, old enough to appreciate the food and come early to get as much of it as possible. His mother, when she caught him and began introducing him as the star, didn't even appear to notice his eyes. Her compatriots certainly did, but seeing as they purported to be artists living in the hinterlands of conformity they could say nothing, only make faces at each other when they thought he couldn't see.  
  
His mother's hostess duties soon took her away and Nick made a beeline for the drinks table. That was where Padraig found him, one of the first arrivals and the first to make for the drinks with such alacrity. Finbarr and his band trailed behind, all of them wearing Converse under suit pants.   
  
Padraig grinned and opened his suit jacket: a naggin of whiskey was installed in each inner pocket. Nick didn't like to point out the three bottles of whiskey sitting on the table for anyone to take; it would surely have dulled the shine of Padraig's victory.  
  
Padraig had clearly imbibed on the way, for he was loudly and brashly effusive as he mocked Finbarr, Nick and the food. "What the fuck have you got round your eyes?" he demanded, squinting blearily at Nick.  
  
"Massive head injury," said Nick. "I've bled into my eye sockets."  
  
"Huh." Padraig cocked his head. "Bad luck, begorrah. Have a drink, it'll fix all your problems."  
  
Nick caught Finbarr's eye over his brother's head and grinned. Finbarr mimicked outlining his eyes and mouthed, "Pretty." Nick's smile turned bashful.  
  
At Padraig's suggestion, Nick was more than happy to sit on the stairs and drink with him. It was the perfect place to meet guests as they arrived to the open front door - and the perfect way to avoid having to spend any time with them. Padraig was quite a comfortable companion when he was drunk, aside from his overly-detailed analyses of the attractions of each female he saw. Nick refused to be drawn into a rating scale, on the basis of which Padraig was to choose a companion for the night - but Padraig was happy enough to conduct such studies on his own.  
  
After an hour or two, the steady flow of arrivals decreased to a trickle, then a dribble, then nothing. Everyone who was coming had come and was pressed into the living room dancing, or into the dining room eating. The tiny balloon of hope Nick was carrying about Robbie changing his mind squealed out of existence.   
  
Padraig blundered off to find his target and Nick followed reluctantly. To drink alone at his own eighteenth would invite unnecessary comment, in the way drinking with everyone else would not. He was nodding along to the incomprehensible conversation of a couple of the boys in his class when he felt a tap on his shoulder.   
  
He turned around to see Jack for the first time that night - and, shockingly, Laura. Nick's face must have asked the question he was unable to vocalise, because Jack said, "I told her to come. You still invited her."  
  
"I did," said Nick dazedly. He pecked Laura on the cheek, a move she took with good, if frigid, grace.   
  
"I wanted to give you this." Laura thrust a slim package at him. It had been wrapped with care and a huge froofy bow. Nick felt an ache of sorrow. "I couldn't return it anyway, so you might as well have it." She took a deep, shaky breath. "Happy birthday, Nick."  
  
"Thank you," said Nick. He was deeply moved. Laura looked pretty, with her hair in rigid curls and dressed in a strapless silver number that matched the bow on his present.   
  
“Just so you know,” she said. “I wouldn’t have minded. About –” she waved her hand at Nick’s face. “I wouldn’t have minded.”  
  
“I know,” said Nick quietly, who did. Laura threw a helpless look at Jack before walking away, her head held high.  
  
"Go on," Jack's voice broke into his stupor. "Open it. She's been talking my ear off about it for months."  
  
The expensive paper came away in Nick's hands. He gave the bow to Jack, who pocketed it. A plain black box threw Nick into confusion. He'd been expecting a CD or a book. He looked up at Jack, who nodded encouragingly.  
  
Inside the box was a striped shirt with the number three on it. Nick lifted it out and as the folds straightened, he read the printed words: Shaqueal O'Neal.  
  
"She bought it online," said Jack. "She wanted it to bring you luck."  
  
"Oh, god." Nick pressed a hand blindly to his face. Jack held out a glass.   
  
"It's only water," said Jack. "I think you've had a bit too much to drink, eh?"  
  
Nick slurped messily at the water. Jack took the shirt out of his hands and clumsily returned it to its box, in a state of far greater disarray than it had emerged.   
  
"Where's Robbie?" asked Jack, after a minute. Nick gave him a keen look. Jack gazed innocently back, wearing the same expression of bovine of indifference as ever.   
  
"He wouldn't come," muttered Nick.  
  
"Shame," said Jack. "Maybe you should go get him."  
  
"Leave the party?" Nick looked at him in bewilderment.  
  
"You're having a terrible time, you look miserable, and Robbie's not here," said Jack, which Nick had to admit was a masterful summation of events. "Look it, you're wearing makeup and I saw you kissing him yesterday. Wherever you're supposed to be, it isn't here."  
  
"You saw -" Nick gaped. Jack shrugged, like it wasn't any more important than seeing Nick eat his lunch. Which, in a way, it wasn't.  
  
"Don't worry." Jack's grin was sudden and sharp. "I didn't tell Paudie. He might need a bit of ... advance warning."  
  
Nick went to hug Jack, who stepped back hurriedly. "None of that, now," he warned. "The only person who gets to hug me is my mammy."  
  
" _Thank_ you," said Nick.   
  
"Just get out of here," said Jack. "Your long face is making _me_ depressed. Don't worry, I'll tell everyone you're in the jacks."  
  
"I might be gone longer than that," said Nick.  
  
Jack cast a baleful eye around the room's occupants, all of whom were in various stages of inebriation. Jack, Nick noticed, was holding a can of 7Up. "Hate to break it to you," said Jack, "but I doubt they'll notice."  
  
+++  
  
It was ten o'clock by the time Nick arrived at Robbie's house. He leaned on the bell till Frances answered the door. The cold air had done nothing to sober him up, but Nick wasn't blaming the alcohol.  
  
"Why, hello dear. Don't you look smart?"   
  
"Where's Robbie? I mean," Nick gulped, "I really need to see Robbie. Is he in?"  
  
"Well, no." Frances gave him a strange look. "His dad took him to Dublin to the physio. Didn't he tell you?"  
  
The words landed like a blow. "No," said Nick slowly, "he didn't." There were physios in Cork, Nick knew that well. Why would Robbie need to go all the way to Dublin to see one? Robbie didn't seem sick, and he'd never mentioned an injury. It was a mystery, and Nick was starting to hate mysteries with a fiery passion.  
  
"They should be back fairly soon," Frances offered. "If you like, you can wait for him -?"  
  
"Yes, please," said Nick. "I'd like to wait for him." He stepped inside.  
  
+++  
  
Nick didn't think he'd be able to relax in Robbie's room without Robbie in it, but anything was better than making small talk with Frances while she knitted booties for Robbie's niece. He browsed Robbie's extensive book collection and in fact, when he heard a car pull up outside, he was surprised to find an hour had passed. John Irving was more enthralling than he looked.   
  
Nick put the book aside and sat up straight. He brushed down the fronts of his immaculate pants and, when he heard a slow tread on the stairs, clasped his hands together.  
  
Robbie stopped stock still in the doorway, but he didn't look surprised; Nick gathered Frances had warned Robbie of his presence. Nick lifted his chin and stared. Robbie met his gaze with a level one of his own.  
  
Nick was determined not to speak first. Robbie was the one with the explaining to do. But Robbie didn't say a word. Instead, he closed the door with a gentle click and came to stand in front of Nick. He was wearing a long grey cardigan over a white t-shirt and jeans. He pulled off the cardigan first, kicked away his shoes and went for his belt buckle. With precise movements, his eyes fixed on Nick's face, Robbie pulled open his zipper and pushed down his jeans. Nick was distracted for a second by the cute sheep on Robbie's boxers, before the movement of Robbie stepping out of his jeans drew his gaze downwards.  
  
He was wearing odd socks. The one on the right was blue and white stripes; the one on the left was a thick red hiking sock. Despite his resolution not to speak, Nick was about to make a smart comment when he saw - _it_.  
  
Robbie only had one leg. A fine covering of black hair swirled around his right leg and disappeared beneath his sock. On the left side, the hair stopped abruptly a few inches below his knee - as did his skin. The stump of his leg was slightly pinker than the rest and bisected by a thick scar. It sat in a cup held on with two straps.  
  
"But wait, there's more," said Robbie, in a mocking tone. He bent his left knee, wincing slightly, and pulled off the sock.   
  
The foot was grotesque: a parody of a human foot, with toenails carved into the plastic, it was nevertheless monstrous. Nick stared; he couldn't help it. He forced himself to look up, however, and into Robbie's face. Unsurprisingly, Robbie looked miserable, but also slightly triumphant.  
  
"My best friend used to live on a farm," he began, then corrected himself: "Well, he probably still does, we're just not friends any more. Lawsuits will do that. There was a threshing machine, we were bored – not a good combination.”  
  
Nick reached out and hesitated. Robbie shrugged. "You can touch it. I won't feel anything, obviously." Nick bit his lip and placed his palm around the cool plastic. It felt normal but also wrong, because his mind was telling him that warm human skin should be there. He slid his hand up to where the stump met the prosthesis. Robbie gasped.  
  
"Does it hurt?"  
  
Robbie shook his head. "Just - feels weird."  
  
Nick kept his hand on what was left of Robbie's leg when he asked, "Is this why you acted so weird yesterday?"  
  
"Is this why -" Robbie laughed, although humour was the last thing on Nick's mind. "No. I just deluded myself into thinking I could have a normal life. It was already too much to expect that I could have a band. A hot guy liking me back - me - Long John Silver - it's fucking ridiculous. I can't think of a better passion killer than this -" he pointed at the leg "- _thing_."  
  
Nick didn't know what to say. In many respects Robbie was right. Looking at Robbie's leg turned Nick's stomach a little, and he was already thinking of how it would impact their - intimate relations. But then he realised the fact that he was considering it meant that he still wanted it to happen. So he did the only thing he could think of, which was to lean forward just a little and kiss the seam that ended Robbie's leg.   
  
Robbie's hand landed in his hair and clenched in, hard. "You had a perfect girlfriend," he said, his voice hard. "You had the perfect life. Why would you exchange all that for me?"  
  
Nick thought of his father, who had a beautiful, expensive home, a rich wife and a bright, well-behaved son; a well-paying, secure job and all the comforts money could buy. He'd given it all up for an uncertain future in an ex-eighties rock band, with no guarantees of happiness blossoming from the wasteland of heartbreak he'd left behind. He trailed his hand up Robbie's side, lifting his shirt a little to reveal the sword and the two inches between Robbie's waist and hip that turned Nick's stomach all giddy.  
  
"I suppose I'm just my father's son," he said.  
  
"Yes, I'm my father's son too," said Robbie. "I'll think you'll find most people are. The point I'm really building up to here is: so?"  
  
"My dad ... ran things," said Nick. "He was responsible and mature and he took care of things. I suppose I always thought I took after him, mainly because I couldn't paint a wall. I think he and my mother got along well for a long time. But I don't want to wait till I'm forty-five till I start living."  
  
"You might have lost your good looks by then," Robbie agreed. They sat in silence for a long time, but Nick felt happy to sit and think with his thumb wrapped around Robbie's. It was Robbie's leg twitching that made him move. He leaned over and pressed his lips to Robbie's, nuzzling against the dry outer curve. Robbie shivered and broke the kiss, kneading his thigh with a fist.  
  
"Are you okay?" Nick asked.   
  
"Fine," said Robbie. He hopped over to retrieve his jeans. "Sometimes my leg just thinks it still has a foot attached, you know?"  
  
Nick didn't, but he nodded anyway. Robbie walked over to his guitars, shaking out his leg as he did so. "I suppose I'll have to teach you an instrument," he said, sounding long-suffering.  
  
"Why's that?"  
  
"You don't want to be a groupie, do you? Hanging around just for sex with the band?"  
  
"I don't know," said Nick. "Sounds good to me. Think Finbarr would be up for it?"  
  
"Finbarr," said Robbie, low and dangerous, "doesn't get dibs on my boyfriend."  
  
"You have a boyfriend?" yelped Nick, pretending to be outraged. He grinned at Robbie's scornful look, seeing how thinly it lay over his uncertainty.   
  
"Seriously, though," he said. "Otherwise you'll turn into a football widow, only with music, and that would be nothing less than tragic."  
  
"But you already have about three guitar players in your band," Nick pointed out. "I think four might be overkill."  
  
"True," mused Robbie. "Pity you don't play keyboard, actually. Finbarr and I finally convinced Declan to kick Kevin out."  
  
Nick started to smile. "Well," he said, "I've always wanted to learn the piano..."  
  


 


End file.
